By John Ortberg
If you ever feel guilty about not praying enough, raise your mental hand. If someone at a party were to ask you: “How is your prayer life these days?” (which, by the way, is a great way to kill a conversation at a party), what would you say? Is the state of your prayer life determined by how often you pray? How long you pray? Is it measured by how many people you are praying for, or how much faith you pray with, or how many prayers get answered? …
The goal of prayer is not to get good at prayer, not to see who can spend the longest time in prayer. (Jesus said not to pray like the pagans who believe they will be heard because of their many words.) The goal is not to pray with greater feelings of certainty, or greater eloquence, or even greater frequency.
The goal of prayer is to live all my life and to do all my ministry in the joyful awareness that God is present, right here, right now. This is the prayer-filled life that can sustain and empower a life of ministry.
You can hopefully read the full article here, though it may be behind a paywall where I have a subscription. If you want to read it and can’t, message me and I can probably get you either access or a copy.
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