I should pray about this.

I got to have lunch with my friend Jake today. While we ate we talked about Jesus, how He would interact with college students, and which parts of our relationship with Him we wish we were better at. Number one on my list was prayer. Prayer, for me, is this weird enigma. It's so simple. You just talk to God about...stuff. About your day, about your frustrations, about things that make you happy, about things that made you angry, about your goals and dreams, about stuff you screw up, about anything. Every time I set time aside to talk to God I absolutely love it. I love the intimacy. I love that feeling of relationship and knowing that I have the undivided attention of the God of the entire universe.

Here's where the mystery comes in. If it's so easy to do, and I love doing it so much, why is it so freaken hard to get myself to pray? It's not that I don't pray; just not enough. It seems like prayer is the only thing like this for me. I don't ever have to convince myself to play frisbee. I love it and it's pretty simple, so whenever I have a chance to throw a frisbee around I do it. And I can look at lots of other stuff I love to do and say the same thing. If it's simple and I love to do it then its really easy for me to decide to do it, except for praying. Its simple, and I love, yet its always so easy to justify not doing it. I'm too busy, or I'll do it later, or I'm not in the mood (good grief, did I really just say that?).

I think this is the part where a really spiritual person would say, "I had an epiphany and now I pray 10 hours a day." But I haven't. This whole thing is still an enigma to me.

I do know that praying is not optional for me. I will not let my faith be reduced to religious ceremonies or empty intellectual agreement to certain doctrines. My faith, biblical Christianity, is about being able to have a relationship with God because of what Jesus has done for us. Without genuine relationship, nothing else is worth it. Obviously, you can't have a relationship with a person if you don't talk to that person. I know, I should write books, this is some deep stuff. I have to pray. Not because anyone makes me or I think God will hate me if I don't pray as much as I should. But because that's what it will take to have the intimate relationship with God that I want.

Like I said, there is no epiphany. There is no magic thing to try. It's just a matter of doing it more. So that's what I need to do. I have a feeling I'm not alone on this one.

The subject of prayer has been on my mind lately for 2 reasons. First because in the last few weeks some part of me has been wanting to pray a lot more. Its like for some reason God has been inviting me to communicate with Him more lately, which is awesome but it has also made me more aware the great enigma. The other reason is because of an event taking place next week at IU. Several campus ministries are getting together for this thing called Prayerpalooza. The idea is to challenge people to devote more time than they normally would to prayer during Lent. I'm excited about the event as well as the challenge to pray more. If you are in the area and want to check out Prayerpalooza just go to our Facebook page, the info is all there.

I know this post didn't offer much as far as answers or solutions. But I hope that as I let you in on some of the tough questions I'm wrestling with, you'll ask yourself the same tough questions.

Snipple snaps.