Image/Jack Sharp/Unsplash

When you are twenty something, there is more energy in your young bones. When you come to the Lord in your twenties, that energy gets multiplied.

Well, kind of.

I mean, you easily take the next bus to youth camp, you easily say “I love you,” you easily show up.

For me, coming of age at University came with many experiences, great friends, churchy people, over-sized shirts, a couple of romantic heartbreaks, plus attempts to pray all night long – with some guilt.

Yes, I often kind of carried some guilt that I wasn’t a prayer warrior I needed to be. Like many I knew, the guys who (as if praying longer wasn’t enough) threw in 30-day dry fasts, the guys whose voices grew hoarse from “calling on the name of the Lord”.

Such was my “prayerless” life. I even recall jokes from friends that hinted at my inability to go “marathon for the Lord”. It all seemed like banter then, but was battering to my young gospel-thirsty soul then.

I recall being in spiritual meetings where the outwardly prayerful often earned, and kept, their way into leadership and spiritual honour. Public prayer became a badge, speak fast, in tongues, louder and hoarser, and a slice of respect was yours to take – Man-a-gad!

Tones about “tarrying for the Lord the whole night” came off as if we (who often mumbled for mere minutes) were better off as “back-benchers” in the courts of the most high.

What constantly surprised me (albeit not soon enough) was the idea that Jesus seemed to instead applaud a lot of un-platformed prayer, he at one time rebuked those desiring to pray on street corners. The prayer zealots meant well, but often crossed the line as soon as it all got showy. “When you pray, close the door behind you.” God was overheard aligning a people.

You people, nobody told me these things when my eyes were at half-mast in one more gruelling prayer meeting. Nobody reminded me sleep was a gift of God. When my head got weighty at 4am, nobody whispered to me that God gives nights for a reason.

I don’t blame them, they probably forgot the good news I often forget too.

That whereas I’m commanded to pray without ceasing, God does not require me to pray myself into a right relationship with him. He asks me to pray because of the restored relationship I have with him, a relationship neither based on my owl-like awesomeness, nor my wide-eyed wakefulness, but his Son’s finished work along with his continuous intercession on my behalf.

Now because of this, I can go one more hour in prayer, or one more hour under a soft pillow, confident that my many words, or lack thereof, do not justify or disqualify me before God.

I can sleep and wake up confident that whatever my (napping) lot, “thou hath taught me to sing, it is well, it is well, with my soul.”