O Lord

This post on prayer, while perhaps a bit old, seriously cracked me up. The blogger satirizes different styles of prayer and addressing God. He says the basic evangelical prayer includes a number of "justs" ie Lord just, please just etc and from there gets more complex based on denominational background. Here's one example: "Faith-Word: 'We just ask you be with them based on Matt 28:20, and we just proclaim this is reality now, we just speak this into reality by faith' (can also be mixed rather effectively with the Pentecostal upgrade)."

The best ones in my opinion are in the comments section of the post.

I'm often impressed by (1) the stylish olde-world charm of citing scriptures in forms that only existed in the KJV, (2) the casual conversion of such scriptures into claimable promises, and (3) the striking Elijah-like boldness of prayer-as-lay-preaching. (What true Christian would be so crude as to interrupt a prayer meeting to correct you?)"Lord, we know your word says,
Lord, that where there is no vision the people perish. So we just pray, right now, Lord, that you would release your Holy Spirit to give us vision Lord, and teach us that your word is truth, and help us, Lord, to all agree together as one, even as you are one, that limited atonement applies to women but not to men, so that more people may know you, Father, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. Amen, Father, AMEN, for this is your will..."

This got me thinking about my own prayer life and how I pray. When I am alone I think I have a pretty uninhibited prayer life. I feel like I have an ongoing dialogue with God.

At the same time, when I have to pray around other people it is a whole other story. Suddenly I am bogged down by all this weird religious language and frantically trying to remember different prayer phrases. I struggle to express myself with authenticity. Or maybe, to express myself in a way that I think will be accepted by others as authentic! I start to try to remember how I was taught to pray, which was something like:

Father God, thank you for this day and for everything you have given us (except answers to all of our questions about human suffering!) we just (there is it) ask that you would just (again!) do whatever You want (since that's what You are doing anyway!). Help us to feel peace if thats what you want (and have a great day!) and we pray this in the name of your son Jesus Christ. Amen.

Don't even get me started on prayers where people pray for someone to be healed but only if its "the Lord's will". That always struck me as kind of sadistic and disrespectful to thinking people. It's just a way of subtly making an excuse for God in case Jane Jones isn't healed of cancer when Brother Bob says the prayer. God is complex and somewhat unexplainable. It just irks me when people try to make excuses for God not fitting into our limited understanding/logic.