Searching for Simple and Reliable

[I'm working on the Introduction to Live Prayerfully: Three Time-Proven Ways Ordinary Lives Become Prayerful. The general of the aim of the book is to provide guidance on historic practices of prayer in simple ways. Below is an excerpt from the Introduction discussing the need for guidance that is both simple and reliable, though that can often be difficult to find.]

In all of our lives, we inevitably look for guidance from others, whether personally or through books and other media. Sometimes the guidance we get is simple but perhaps not as reliable as we need it to be. For example, it turns out that “an apple a day keeps the doctor away” isn’t as true as people would have us believe. I went through a stretch of my life where I ate apples almost every day, usually dipped in mounds of peanut butter, or perhaps together with oatmeal and cinnamon sugar under a pile of ice cream, or (my favorite) in a dessert my wife makes together with gobs of cool whip and pieces of Snickers bars. I followed the advice to have an apple a day pretty well during those years, but for some reason, while eating those apples in these ways, it was in that same period of time that I went from having recently been a college athlete to hardly being able to even think about running down and back on a basketball court. The doctors visits ensued, despite all the apples I consumed. The advice regarding apples was simple, but not as reliable as goobers like me need it to be.

On the other hand, we’ve all probably also had experience with advice that is reliable, but not simple enough. If I start having car problems, I can walk into my local auto parts store and locate the thick printed repair guide for my car’s make and model. I will have no idea how to do what it says. That does not mean its guidance is unreliable, but it just is not simple enough for me.

Thankfully, though, there is another kind of advice. The best advice we receive in life, the kind that sticks with us for decades and that we make sure to pass on to our kids and grandkids, is that which is both simple and reliable. Dave Ramsey’s Baby Steps have been helpful to me and millions of others for this reason. Or, I’ll never forget sitting with my college pastor as I was preparing to graduate and had the sudden realization that I would no longer be allowed to live in the dorm, eat in the cafeteria and attend classes, but would soon have to find another way to live. As the variety of options seemed rather overwhelming to me, his simple and reliable advice was, “Just make sure you’re in God’s will today and you won’t miss being in it tomorrow.” It was simple and reliable; I’ve never forgotten it and continue to work at shaping my life around it.

From my experience, the need for simple and reliable guidance when we seek to learn to pray is just as needed as in any other part of our lives. Guidance that is described by one end or the other of the simple/reliable spectrum abounds, but guidance that is described by both ends can seem hard to find. So, after having spent quite a bit of time seeking guidance on prayer from sources all across that spectrum, my goal in this book is to pass on the some of the most reliable parts of it in simple ways. So, we will take a look at three time-proven ways that ordinary lives have become prayerful:

• Praying With Other People’s Words
• Praying Without Words
• Praying With Your Own Words

An Elevator Pitch for the Book

If you and I were acquaintances running into each other on an elevator and you asked me how work was going, (if it was a slow elevator and I knew we both had to go all the way to the top) I might tell you that I'm trying to write a book. This was never the case in the past, even though I've been working on it for a couple of years now. Almost no one beyond my wife knew about it before I made it public here on the blog a few days ago in an effort to try to get unstuck on the project. Even my Mom was surprised to find out about it, just as I was surprised to realize I'd never mentioned it to her. I don't intend to be this way, but apparently keeping things from people is one of my greatest natural abilities- even when I don't know that I'm doing it. So, if during that elevator conversation when I mentioned to you that I'm trying to write a book, you did the polite thing and said, "Oh really, what's it about?" I would try to respond like this:

I'm calling it Live Prayerfully: Three Ways Ordinary Lives Have Become Prayerful Throughout the Centuries. It's for people who sincerely want to grow in their attempts to pray, but, like most of us, wouldn't normally access the rich guidance passed down through history about how to build prayerful lives. Often this guidance is in old language, or academic terms, or perhaps very abstract, so I am trying to pass some of the core pieces of that guidance along in fresh and relatable ways by writing about how we can pray with other people's words, pray without words, and pray with our own words, as well as guiding readers into participating in each of those ways of praying. My experience has been that putting those kinds of prayer together allows them to build off of one another and helps the times that we have set aside for prayer to spill over into the rest of our lives, making us more prayerful people.

So now, let's say that you're not just an acquaintance on the elevator, but a really good friend whom I've said this to... what's your reaction?

PS: My wife says that this description may put some of acquaintances to sleep by the time we reach the top floor on that elevator ride. If you agree, your comment can be something like "zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz".

A Life that Makes Prayer Come Naturally

Alf Means was a hero of mine. I didn't know him very well personally, but he was a good friend of my grandfather's, and once a year at Bloys Camp Meeting I would have the opportunity to listen to hear him make an off-the-cuff comment about life with God that would stop me in my tracks. Mr. Means was a lifelong cattle rancher in a very small West Texas town (very small- the population in 2000 was 187), and my family became acquainted with his family generations ago at Bloys. One of my favorite things about going there each year is a men's meeting where everyone has a chance to say something if they wish, but special deference is always given to the old-timers to hear some of their old cowboy stories or whatever type of comment they might like to make. At those meetings, I always looked forward to Mr. Means' turn to speak, because he would either say something with his great wit or just make general comments about life that gave the rest of us a window into the soul of a man who had spent a lifetime living in a deep friendship with God.

2011 was his last year at Bloys, as he died a couple of months after Camp Meeting that year at age 91. The last comment I know of from him at that men's meeting was a great one for him to leave on. I wasn't there that night, but a friend who was there retold the story:

Apparently the men who were there that night were talking about ways that they tried to devote their days to God. Some of them were saying things like how after getting up in the morning, it's a good idea to pray that God would help them to live that day devoted to him, that for that day they could steer clear of temptation, love others well, etc. It's good advice, and we'd all certainly do well to develop such a practice.

But when it came around to Mr. Means, he said, "You know, I don't really do that. It just comes natural."

I want to have that kind of prayerful life. If I reach my 90s like he did, I want to have spent enough time in intentional prayer and soaking my mind in the Scriptures, that eventually the distinctions between prayer and the things that "just come natural" in my life no longer exist.

Writing the Book

Here are some confessions: Like anyone who at least fiddles around with writing, I think I have some ideas that I could turn into good books. But, even with the millions of books published each year, that number is greatly exceeded by ideas from people like me that never actually get finished and written. I'm sure I'll always have my share of those, but I also hope that I'll actually do something with some of the ideas.

Yet it isn't easy to keep moving toward finished. I have a stellar track record of starting on things that (I think) are great ideas, but I don't think I'd get picked for anyone's team if I were only judged by the things I've brought to completion. I have a book I've been working on for... according to the calendar, it's two years now. Yikes. (If that weren't bad enough, it's been two years on a really short book.)

But the book is about three ways to pray- a type of introduction to classical methods of prayer that have helped ordinary people live prayerful lives through the centuries. The stuff has been incredibly helpful to me, and I think it will be very helpful to others, so I want to get it out there.

But I'm stuck.

Traditional publishing routes haven't panned out. (Apparently, they almost never do for someone trying to do it this way: never having been published before and having a blog readership of- maybe 30-50 of you?.) Self-publishing isn't a bad option these days, but it requires some of my own money rather than someone else's, and I always seem to find other things more fun to do whenever extra funds that come in rather than getting this idea to completion.

But I really don't want to spend the rest of my life wishing I'd written the book. I don't even want to spend another year wishing I'd written the book.

So here's the public declaration: I'm going to get the thing finished. And I'm going to get it published in some form or another. The size of the audience doesn't matter too much to me. What matters more is that it's done in a way that is helpful to people and that it can move from the wish list to the actually done list.

(You all are now my official accountability group.)