Prayer & Worship
I talk to God the way I talk to a mate in the pub, and lately I wonder whether I have lost any sense of who I am talking to. Is casual prayer disrespectful?
“Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God, and be more ready to hear, than to give the sacrifice of fools: for they consider not that they do evil. Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter any thing before God: for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few.”
The Teacher's advice about going up to the temple is startlingly restrained: watch your step, do not be hasty with your mouth, let your words be few, because God is in heaven and you are on the earth. He is writing to people at risk of making rash vows they had no intention of keeping. The warning is not against closeness. It is against carelessness, treating an audience with God as trivial.
“Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear:”
Having described a kingdom that cannot be shaken, the writer draws his conclusion: serve God acceptably, with reverence and godly fear. The same letter has already told these readers to come boldly to the throne of grace. Both instructions live inside one short document, addressed to the same people. Boldness and awe were never set up as opposites, and losing either one leaves you praying to something smaller than God.
A path forward
Begin one prayer a day with who God is rather than with what you need. Read Psalm 8, Psalm 29 or Psalm 145 out loud and let it reset the scale before you start asking.
Keep the informality and add silence. Sit for one minute before you speak, and try kneeling or standing rather than slouching. Bodies affect attention more than we admit.
Watch what you promise. Reverence shows up less in your vocabulary than in whether you keep what you told God you would do.
Closing verse
“But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared.”
- Psalm 130:4
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