When your heart isn't in it.

For a very long time I found it easier to spend time with God during difficult times. Due to many things happening growing up, my faith was a core value which kept me going and taught me how to be a christian in times of crisis. There is something about the depths of despair, loneliness, depression or pain that makes it necessary to remember constantly God's love, mercy and justice just to get by each day. My big problem right now is that this means that I never learnt what it means to follow Jesus in times of peace.

As things have in some ways gotten quieter, my time in prayer has not been an emotional experience anymore - there is no burden to be put down, there isn't a particular relief after prayer that makes me feel much better having done it. Life is good, and if I didn't have some deep question or request, where does prayer fit into life? My faith wavers sometimes and my attention is driven to other things. I have tried sitting and praying, waiting for something incredible and supernatural to happen - but  often nothing happens. I have tried forcing myself to be contemplative, trying to take grand conclusions about theology or God even from trivial phenomena. A friend, many years ago, even asked "why are you forcing your relationship with God to be contemplative?" - the reality is, I thought this was what it meant to be a Christian. It has only been recently that my views on this have finally been challenged: is the emotional experience I think I need to have every time I spend with God biblical or cultural? I remember particularly when talking to my friends the unanimous opinion that 'praying is very hard' set me to think: why does it feel so difficult? 

Christianity is not an emotional experience

In the Bible, many prayers come in moments of emotional extremes - either praise and celebration prayers or praying for help/deliverance. One look through the psalms and you'll find 150 examples of people either being completely enraptured with God himself or being completely desperate. So, yes, prayer does seem to have some connection to emotion. But we also have examples of the exchanges with God being more continuous, a daily, regular affair. For example, Daniel prayed three times a day (Dn. 6.10) and Jesus would take some time away from the crowds to pray and be in solitude (Luke 6.12-13, Mark 3.13, Mt. 13.14). Why do we find it so difficult to do so now? 

A few days ago I opened my Bible hoping for something exciting, uplifting and... instead had to read about Ezekiel's vision of a man who looked made of bronze measuring every single wall, gate and room in the new temple. The next day, more measurements. The next day, more measurements again. My quiet time really felt like a one way conversation, and after three days of this - when I was really hoping to hear God say something through his word - was, well, disappointing. 

I would not be surprised if, like me, more people thought that do be 'doing quiet time right' we need the big emotional revelation every time. Perhaps it is a way of seeking an instant reward for it: I took time to pray, therefore God will make me happy/give me insight into my future and decisions/fix this for me. If God did not give me my little golden star, then I have no immediate motivator to pray or it means I don't know how to do it - and therefore I don't try again. Or perhaps we even feel like it is a source of embarrassment - when people have piles of incredible stories of incredible answers to prayer and after years you still have 'nothing to show' the shame and possibly guilt (is there something wrong with me? am I worse than others?) might be disheartening. 

I think that this is an area where our current culture has made us lose the plot in our belief. Too often an emotional experience is raised far higher than an intellectual one, and while emotion can be a part of the Christian experience it would make for a very fragile belief system if it relied on how we feel. And this is where Christianity and the ample evidence for the events it affirms (for more on this I would recommend I don't have enough faith to be an atheist), the rational belief should continue to be sufficient to motivate us to live according to its values - even when you're reading about the number of cubits of the east wall of the new temple has. 

While very often we pray for God to change our emotions such as to help us to feel love towards others, to help us to love him more, seek his will and to act in a way that pleases him - all very good things - the Bible does not command us to feel a certain way. It commands us to live a certain way. It gives us very hands on advice: "train yourself to be godly" (1 Tim. 4.7), "This is why we labor and strive" (1 Tim. 4.10) , " [the Spirit of God] gives us power, love and self discipline". Making the right decision and acting on it may lead us to having the right feelings, but waiting around for the feelings to show up is failing to understand the importance and urgency to obey. 

I know it may sound like a massive cliché, but the fact that we have a relationship with God is the all transforming key concept in Christianity. We are not seeking enlightenment through contemplation, we are also not doing good things to get good things back: unlike many philosophies and belief systems, we are not the centre. 

Overwhelmingly the metaphor used for God in relation to his people is the one of God being the father (just to cite a few, Psalm 68.6, Malachi 2.10, 1 Corinthians 8.6, Ephesians 4.6), and having a relationship with him means taking the back seat and often obeying when we don't know why. 

If I think about God as father, daily time with him suddenly makes a lot more sense - I think of a family dinner table where the eight year old at the end of the day telling dad what happened that day: this happened in school, this made me sad, I had an exam, I made a new friend. Conversation is not big and emotional necessarily - although those times may come - but it is simple, honest and routinely. Importantly, the child also hears the father - perhaps even talking about something that it doesn't understand yet, but is still listening and learning. And one day in the future, many years from now, it may remember that conversation and respond appropriately because its dad said something about that (maybe one day the size of the eastern wall will make sense...). 

In my experience of someone with wobbly faith, being rationally convinced about Christianity and acting in spite of not feeling like it has kept me going through seasons of confusion or even plain apathy. In fact, if you have ever had a meaningful relationship - a parent, a sibling, a close friend, a spouse - you probably know how important acting in spite of how you feel can be for a relationship. Whether it is because of a fight or just something that made you sad, sulking or holding a grudge is the same as saying 'how I am feeling is more important than you are'. But, set aside those feelings and act like you feel like you love them and you are then far more likely to actually go back to feeling love for them again. 

In light of all of this theoretical discussion about spending time with God even when your heart isn't in it, I have compiled a few things that have helped me in those seasons. I know that many of the blog's readers are far more experienced and wise, so please feel free to leave in the comments any suggestions of things I haven't added to the list that have helped you, and hopefully we can help each other keep striving towards godliness together. 

•  Look at other people's written prayers: The Lord's prayer is an incredible place to start, it embraces everything from being grateful, seeing God for who he is up to asking for forgiveness, asking for help even in the most basic needs up to asking for help to live well. Other prayers from the Bible, or the book of common prayer or by other authors can sometimes be helpful. 
• Pray for others (people, nations, world). It helps to keep things in perspective. 
• Pray with other people - friends, spouse, family, you name it. One can encourage the other and it helps the mind not to wander so much.