What if Our Prayer Were Examined?

I recall a person from my time as a student at Jimma University. We connected through faith and later became close friends. I prefer not to mention his name. This friend still amazes me. He would become a completely different person depending on whether he believed his relationship with God was good or not.

When he thought he had a good relationship with God, he wouldn’t even bother to ask about my well-being. He considered me wrong and himself right. Conversely, when he felt his relationship with God wasn’t good, he would become extremely humble.

The measure of whether his relationship with God was good or bad was the amount of time he spent praying. On days he prayed a lot, his self-perception would become highly positive, while his view of me would turn negative, leading me into distress. He would shower me with accusations, look at me with disdain, and offer unsolicited advice. Consequently, I found peace on days he didn’t pray. The fact that his prayer was my torment still troubles me.

This astonishing phenomenon I witnessed during my student years has reappeared in various forms in many places. I’ve observed it in some people who say, “We pray.” They boast about their prayer life and look down on those they consider weak in prayer. For some, prayer has become a competition and a measure of status, making them arrogant. They self-righteously brag and boast about their prayers. This realization has made me feel uneasy rather than comfortable whenever I encounter someone who frequently speaks about prayer publicly.

How can a person be proud while praying? Isn’t prayer itself an act of humility and humbling oneself before God? Doesn’t the scripture speak of humbling oneself in prayer (2 Chronicles 7:14, James 4:10)? If we claim to converse and be intimate with God for hours every day, why do we struggle to speak humbly with people even for a few minutes? Isn’t the God before whom we kneel still with us when we finish praying? Shouldn’t the time we spend with God imbue us with His character? These questions have lingered in my mind for years.

Related to my questions, one thing I’ve realized in my spiritual journey is that quite a few believers have a problematic understanding of God’s jealousy. We portray God as if He’s constantly looking for a reason to be angry. We imagine His relationship with His creation to be full of rivalry. Our misunderstanding of God’s jealousy has prevented us from correctly understanding His relationship with His creation. We forget that God brought forth creation by His own will, not out of compulsion. We also fail to see that creation is the result of God’s love. We neglect the fact that He still sustains it through His provision and reveals Himself through it.

Forgetting that creation is the result of His gracious will and is still sustained by His provision leads us to depict God as being in unnecessary competition with His own creation. But God is not a God who competes with His creation. All the good things we receive through what He has created come from God and no one else.

Because we consider God to be an “only me” God, we view the presence of others in our lives as creating “another god” (making our own idols). Therefore, we unnecessarily prioritize the warning “You shall have no other gods before me” above everything else. Anyone who loves their work, children, spouse, or anything else is considered to be in trouble. So, under the guise of “lest it become an idol,” we deprive our loved ones of words of affection and care. Our love for our spouses and children does not diminishes our love of God. In the name of God’s jealousy, we have even prevented grieving parents from weeping for their lost children. We forget that idolatry is forgetting God and creating another god.

We consider depending on God to be the opposite of depending on others. Therefore, saying to others, “I need you,” seems like a lack of faith. Because we consider God to be one who desires to oppress and rule rather than cooperate, we struggle to say, “With God’s help and yours.” Quite a few of us also think that receiving help from God means denying the tangible help we receive from others. We forget that being grateful for others and what we have received through others is maturity, not a problem. So, we choose to think that God compelled those who did good to us. It becomes difficult for us to offer heartfelt gratitude for the kindness and goodness we have seen.

Because we consider God to be at war with everyone except Himself, we think that siding with God and being indifferent to others are the same. We become enemies of those we ourselves label as God’s enemies, all in God’s name. We think loving God means hating others. Because we believe that siding with God means opposing everyone else, whenever we draw closer to God, we feel we must clash with others, so we look for a pretext; we don’t feel righteous unless we oppose others.

However, the healthy attitude towards prayer is different. First and foremost, it is a demonstration that our lives are a gift we have received from Him and that we depend on God. To pray is to say that we always need God; it is to hope in God. It is to acknowledge our weakness and our need for help. Above all, prayer is our workshop where our weaknesses are supported. When we know our dependence, pride will not be our companion.

The manifestation of healthy prayer is compassion. Prayer breaks our hardened hearts and makes us compassionate. How? Prayer clearly shows us God’s power and our weakness. One who knows his weakness does not boast. Instead, he has compassion; he puts back the stone he picked up to stone others. When we pray, what we recognize first is not that we are angels separated from people, but our humanity, our very being with its many frailties. Because we confront the weaknesses we have denied, we have more compassion for the weak. This enables us more than ever to stand in others’ shoes, share their feelings, and be with them in a spirit of helpfulness.

Healthy prayer does not mean that because I have spoken to God, I no longer have any responsibility. Praying is not stopping thinking about the matter. It is giving our thoughts the opportunity to be examined by God, to be understood, and to be helped by Him. Praying repeatedly about a matter also means giving that matter space in our hearts. What stays in our hearts, we also think about. We pray not to fold our hands but to discern the action we need to take and to receive the grace we need from God. Prayer does not turn us from being agents and doers into mere talkers and negligent individuals.

True prayer does not allow us to make all the good things we see in our lives objects of competition. It helps us realize that everything we have received is from God. Understanding that all we have is received from His grace helps us become more grateful than ever before. We also accept the good things we have as expressions of God’s love, not as something to compete with others over. Then, gratitude becomes a melody flowing from within us, not words we painstakingly arrange.

Let us not forget to examine ourselves before and after praying. Let us not allow prayer to ever become our boast and pride. Let us refrain from thinking that the days we prayed we held up the heavens and that the heavens were in danger of falling on the days we didn’t. Let us realize that it is God who sustains all things by the word of His power, not us. Above all, let us ask ourselves if the time we say we spend with God in prayer is indeed making us better people.

Let us also examine our prayers. Let us never allow our prayer to be separated from humility. Let us ensure that our prayer always reminds us of our dependence on God, our interdependence with one another, and our weaknesses. Let our prayer expand the heart with which we see things from other people’s perspectives, rather than narrow our vision. Let us also be careful that our prayer does not make us indifferent and inactive people. Let us remember that praying is not the opposite of thinking; we pray not to stop thinking but to think rightly.

Above all, let us not make our holy prayer another tool for competition in our social lives. Let us support each other through our prayers, and let the gaps we see in the prayer life of many do not deter us from making prayer our daily practice. Let us always be careful not to reach a point where we stop praying; let us pray, and when we pray, let humility be our garment.

[1]  Given that the article was originally written in Amharic and then translated into English using AI, it’s important to be mindful of potential nuances that might have been lost in translation.