You know its coming is as certain as Jesus' coming. The prayer requests have been spoken. You can hear it nearing in his voice. Pastor is about to select a helpless victim to volunteer as tribute to pray out loud.
Do you:
A.) Avoid the fatal mistake of initiating contact with his eyeballs
B.) Gracefully dive underneath your chair and hope his eyeballs fail to notice
C.) Fervently pray with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength that you will not have to pray
D.) Eagerly raise your hand, jumping out of your seat, begging to be the one to bite the bullet for everyone else
Why do some of us find it so daunting to pray in front of others? Seriously, what are we afraid of? Is the congregation going to run us out of the church with pitchforks and hardcover Bibles? Are they going to cut out our tongues if we stutter or fail to produce a poetic prayer? Are we going to end up on America's Most (Un)Wanted for butchering a prayer?
Or are we afraid that people will see what is in our hearts, good or bad? Are we so afraid of vulnerability that we are more eager to rob others of a blessing than to step outside our comfort zones? Is our trust in those present so lacking that we never give them something to be trusted with? Are we that concerned with proffering the perfect words that we constantly keep our lips locked?
A sacrifice given begrudgingly does not belong in the hearts of believers. These putrid offerings make God want to vomit. He would prefer that we never show up to the prayer meeting than pretend we love praying out loud.
But His heart rejoices when we rely on Him to place His soul-soothing, wise words into our mouths and the ears of others. When we trust that He can overcome our stutters and awkward wording. When we are content to allow Him to be glorified through simple words instead of using flowery figures of speech to flatter our egos. When He is our only focus and the opinions of those present have no significance. When He is Lord of our mouths (which receive words from our hearts).
There are times to be silent and times to speak. God needs to dictate when those times occur. These times are not contingent on your feelings. Pain does not excuse us from blessing others with speech or silence. Compassion motivated Jesus to speak to several people immediately before and during His crucifixion.
When we fearfully avoid allowing others to hear our prayers, we demonstrate a lack of understanding. We do not comprehend God or the purpose of prayer as well as we should. We tell others that prayers must meet a certain standard. We proclaim that God only wants to hear the “good” prayers; God only desires to hear from the people who are the best prayers. We lie.
If we want to repent and change our thinking, we must do that through……
Prayer.
