This was originally intended to be a stand-alone post. But the moment I got into it, I became overwhelmed by how much bigger the topic is than I could have imagined. So instead, I’ll let this post serve as a much-needed introduction to the series to come.
Like any other Christian, I didn’t know anything of the Christian life when I started living it. It’s not hard to find a person who lives as a Christian simply because they’ve known no different - maybe they were raised in a Christian home: going to church, saying a prayer before eating and sleeping, and being spoon-fed Bible verses. But if these people were challenged to a more convenient lifestyle of less ritual, there’s no root to keep them where they are.
I have the opposite background - I wasn’t raised in the church. And when I started living for Jesus, it destroyed the comfort I had living apart from Him. It was like being jettisoned through the windshield of a car in the midst of a head-on collision. Truly, I was heading the opposite way when I ran smack into Jesus. The only difference is that it didn’t all happen at once; I had to change so many seemingly small things about how I live and what I believe. But much like a change in the arrangement of tiny subatomic particles seems small and yields such enormous change, my life had to change because of the rearrangement of my very core. And this is all a process that is still happening every day. There were (and still are) a lot of things I had to directly face - issues from which there’s no hiding for the follower of Christ. I think of matters like evolution versus creation, abortion versus life, marriage, election, entertainment, and the lot. Whether or not you like it, you must confront these things; you must decide what you believe or allow others to decide for you. I’m not here to push a conservative or liberal agenda - but I will tell you that you must decide whether you believe the messages God has left us in Scripture. Any true follower can confirm from experience that there are many practices and beliefs of the world that are irreconcilable with what God has told us is true. And in this window of time, there’s beauty in the freedom we currently have to choose to say “yes, I believe.”
And if you believe, will you stand up for what God tells us? Will you defend His Word when your prosperity vanishes? Will you believe His Word when it is not popular? Will you remain faithful when you are persecuted for doing so?
There are so many things that had to change when I stopped living for me and started living for Him. I didn’t simply change. I died. And now it’s by Christ’s life that I live.
“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” - Galatians 2:20
Looking back, I see that I literally experienced what Paul talked about in his letter to Galatia. I truly have the joy of living that piece of Scripture.
And one thing I had to learn about, in the midst of the collision, was prayer. Don’t get me wrong - I had prayed before. And it would be a dramatization if I said that my prayer was spontaneously painted with awesomeness the moment I got saved. If anything, it was the opposite; I realized that I had no idea how pointless and muted my prayers were before I got saved. Seriously - I remember being a little kid and praying that God would give me the ability to turn into a cat whenever I wanted. Obviously, my prayers changed with age. But that cat prayer wasn’t such a far cry from how meaningless my prayer time was before I gave it to Jesus.
I remember a time that I confronted one of my colleagues about a misunderstanding she had about the Gospel. She said “I don’t think you realize how religious I am. I pray a lot.” What she didn’t know (and what I wasn’t quick-on-my-feet enough to think to tell her in that moment) is that Jesus spoke directly to that in His dealings with the Pharisees. We know that the Pharisees did a lot things for the wrong reasons - but nevertheless, they did them well and with great consistency. We know “they preach[ed] but [did] not practice” ( as in Matthew 23:1-39). We can assume that Jesus was talking about the Pharisees when He tells the disciples that “when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites” because “they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, they they may be seen by others” (Matthew 6:5).
I remember a time that I confronted one of my colleagues about a misunderstanding she had about the Gospel. She said “I don’t think you realize how religious I am. I pray a lot.” What she didn’t know (and what I wasn’t quick-on-my-feet enough to think to tell her in that moment) is that Jesus spoke directly to that in His dealings with the Pharisees. We know that the Pharisees did a lot things for the wrong reasons - but nevertheless, they did them well and with great consistency. We know “they preach[ed] but [did] not practice” ( as in Matthew 23:1-39). We can assume that Jesus was talking about the Pharisees when He tells the disciples that “when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites” because “they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, they they may be seen by others” (Matthew 6:5).
Why? Because prayer is something you must learn how to do. I wish somebody told me that a long time ago. And I’ve yet to even mention stuttering.
For the stutterer who follows Jesus, prayer is not simply a supplement. Prayer needs to be the only way you get the next word out. Many times have I bowed prostrate and strained out words to God. Many times have I relied on “utterances too deep for words” (Romans 8:26). I’ve spent much of that time praying endlessly for healing without receiving it. Likewise, I spent a lot time before and after I got saved being angry that God didn’t heal me after hours of prayer. In some of my copies of the Bible, the page with red-word dialogue about what God told Paul when He didn’t heal the apostle in 2 Corinthians 12 has seen the moisture of tears many times. Learning to pray has been a recent edification in my life. And I want to share what little I know.
As pastor Buddy Gray says “If you try to use God to get something, then that something is your god.” Too many times have I let my desire for perfect fluency become more important to me than what God tells me is important. And that’s most evident in my prayer closet. More times than I know have I prayed the way my desire for fluency leads me to pray in spite of the way Jesus commands me to pray. And that’s exactly what this series is about. If you’re a stutterer, you need to know that Jesus is bigger and more important than you’ve ever felt your stutter to be no matter how broken it’s made you feel. If you’re a follower of Christ, you need to know that your prayer to God is more important than words you say to anyone else. How much closer must the Christian who stutters hold to these truths?
In Matthew 6, Jesus lays out the model of how we are to pray. That’s the quote in bold (if you’re reading this on thestutteringchristian.com. Other wise, you’ll see it somewhere else.) My vision for this series is to study each section of this prayer with a magnifying glass, line by line, looking at the anatomy and physiology of prayer - and look at what each line means for our prayer in practicality, apart from abstraction.
[END OF PART 1 OF SERIES]
As pastor Buddy Gray says “If you try to use God to get something, then that something is your god.” Too many times have I let my desire for perfect fluency become more important to me than what God tells me is important. And that’s most evident in my prayer closet. More times than I know have I prayed the way my desire for fluency leads me to pray in spite of the way Jesus commands me to pray. And that’s exactly what this series is about. If you’re a stutterer, you need to know that Jesus is bigger and more important than you’ve ever felt your stutter to be no matter how broken it’s made you feel. If you’re a follower of Christ, you need to know that your prayer to God is more important than words you say to anyone else. How much closer must the Christian who stutters hold to these truths?
In Matthew 6, Jesus lays out the model of how we are to pray. That’s the quote in bold (if you’re reading this on thestutteringchristian.com. Other wise, you’ll see it somewhere else.) My vision for this series is to study each section of this prayer with a magnifying glass, line by line, looking at the anatomy and physiology of prayer - and look at what each line means for our prayer in practicality, apart from abstraction.
[END OF PART 1 OF SERIES]
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