I think Jesus would disagree. The Gospel writers told us Jesus was sometimes exhausted after praying. And once in Gethsemane, Jesus prayed so intensely He sweat blood. If I was ever sweating during my prayers, something was wrong with the air conditioner.
We pray at different levels.
The first level is to pray about what we do. We want:
- help not to do something;
- help doing something;
- or for Jesus to tell us what to do.
That’s where most of us stop. We keep our prayers on our behavior:
- If we’re doing well, we’re grateful.
- If we’re being bad, we’re sorry.
Jesus sounds more like Santa Claus—rewarding good little girls and boys and punishing bad little girls and boys.
The Christian faith is more than just behavior modification. The goal of Christ is to transform the individual—not just change our outward behavior.
This is where prayer gets hard—when we get past the surface issues of our lives down to the bedrock foundation of who we are.
When we recognize that our behavior is nothing more than the expression of our being, then prayer gets a little tougher.
When we understand the goal is to live like Christ because we are like Christ, then you can see the challenge.
Prayer at this level is hard because it deals with the essence of who we are. The more time we spend with Christ at this level, the more we become like Him.
No, it’s not easy—but nothing worth having ever is.
