Ritual or Relationship: A Quiz about Your Prayer Life
- Chuck Lawless
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
This week, we begin a new series of blog posts about the spiritual discipline that I consider the most difficult one to master: prayer. To lay the groundwork for this series, I want to start with my description of what prayer is: “Prayer is a cry for relationship with God and a confession of dependence on Him.”
Here, in fact, is the way I describe prayer in my book, The Potential and Power of Prayer: “[Prayer] is communicating with God and expressing our love and our need for him. It is both gift and obligation, privilege and responsibility, discipline and delight. It characterizes those who know him, for true believers will pray.”*
Prayer, however, is seldom easy. In the weeks to come, we will talk more about why prayer is difficult. For this week, though, I want to focus on one issue: we treat prayer more as a ritual than as a relationship. We treat it as something we should or must do more than what we want to do.
I suspect that was the case with Jesus’ disciples, too. They likely had learned something about prayer in their Judaism, but that prayer was probably ritualistic. They had learned to pray the right words at the right time. When they saw and heard Jesus pray, though, they saw something different. They saw relationship, and out of that relationship they saw results through prayer. Surely that’s why Jesus’ disciples asked Him to teach them to pray (Luke 11:1).
Ritual or relationship—which best describes the way you pray today? Use these questions to consider which one more characterizes your prayer life right now:
Do you pray because you have to or because you want to? If you talk to God only because “that’s what a Christian is supposed to do,” you’re likely treating prayer as a ritual. Relationship prayer, on the other hand, naturally flows from a commitment of love for God.
Are you comfortable praying wherever you are, or must you pray in a certain place at a certain time? It’s fine – important even, for some believers – to have a set time and place to pray each day. But, your prayer life might be ritualistic if you pray only in that place and time.
Do you ever just talk to God about your day, or do you turn to Him only when you have a need? Praying only when a need arises makes prayer a ritual of response. True relationship means you want to talk often with the person, even if you seemingly have nothing important to say.
Does your language style change when you pray? We’ve all heard that leader whose accent disappears and whose words change to KJV English when he prays. That’s ritual. We might even call that “fake.”
Can you make it through the day without praying? If so, that’s not a very strong relationship. I love my wife, and I cannot imagine not talking with her every day—no matter where I am in the world in the midst of my busy travel schedule. It’s our love for God, too, that likewise compels us to want to talk to Him.
Do you feel guilty about not praying more, or is it that you simply miss God because you didn't pray? Ritual often produces guilt, eating at our soul because we simply didn’t meet all of our spiritual expectations for the day. Relationship, on the other hand, longs for God when we miss our time with Him. There’s a void in our heart when don’t talk with God on a given day.
Do your prayers sound alike all the time? That’s one way I realize when I’ve shifted more into ritual. When my prayers sound remarkably alike – sometimes word-for-word alike in a given setting, like praying with my wife in the morning or saying grace over a meal – I’ve moved in the wrong direction.
Has prayer become more "check the box" than "converse with God" for you? Checking the box praying has likely become a ritual you feel obligated to fulfill--not conversation with God to which you look forward. It’s the difference between the discipline of prayer being a drudgery or a delight.
Do you have a prayer-warrior hero who's helped you learn to pray? This question may surprise you, but I include it for a reason. I have people in my life—and there are not a lot of them, frankly—for whom prayer is clearly about deep relationship. You just know that they genuinely spend time with God because they love Him. Without these role models in my life, I recognize that my prayer can become ritualistic.
Do you just know that your prayers are more a Christian ritual than an expression of a relationship? See, I think we do know, unless we’ve allowed our heart to deceive us. Is prayer more ritual or relationship in your life? Be honest. Trust your Holy Spirit-directed gut.
If your praying has become more “I have to pray” than “I get to pray,” here are some simple steps to take:
Daily ask God to give you a “want to pray” heart for Him.
Enlist somebody else to pray the same for you every day. Don’t try to strengthen your prayer life on your own.
For ten minutes each day, take a walk and just talk to God about anything and everything. Give Him your heart for few minutes every day, and that desire to be with Him will grow.
Come back to this website weekly to read more in this series. I truly want to help you develop the spiritual discipline of prayer even as I learn along the way, too.
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* Chuck Lawless, The Potential and Power of Prayer: How to Unleash the Praying Church (Church Answers Resources) (p. 33). Kindle Edition.