Praying Like a Nerd

The most important part of prayer is doing it. But the second most important part, I think, is being authentic, telling God what’s really in your heart instead of pretending you feel what you think you’re supposed to feel. I always picture my fake prayers going something like this:

Me: Oh good and gracious God, I praise you for your mercy and love. I give you thanks, Father, for your many blessings.

Jesus: Shut up.

Me: What?

Jesus: Quit lying to me. You’re just wasting my time. Tell me what you really think.

Me: Okay, fine. I’m pretty ticked about that conversation I had this afternoon and frustrated that I’m always such a jerk and also this is boring.

Jesus: Better. This I can work with.

So I’m going to be really honest with you here and tell you that my prayer is rarely beautiful. In fact, it’s much more likely to be dull, with a little bit of the nerdy thrown in. Hey, I’m just being me. Cases in point:

Newtonian Discernment

I was beginning to feel a tug away from something I thought the Lord had called me to. I’d wrestled and analyzed and discerned my little brains out and finally I’d had enough.

“Jesus, a body in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. I know you pushed me along this path and I feel like my momentum’s been slowed by friction, but if you want me moving another direction, I’m going to need an equal and opposite force. I don’t feel any conviction in the opposite direction, so I’m going to keep moving this way until you push me another way.”

This is how nerds discern.

Declining to Pray

It’s been a long time since I studied Latin (as in 4th grade), but some things never leave you.

“Jesus, my heart…. Well isn’t that interesting. ‘My heart’ there could be the vocative case, like a term of endearment. Or it could be the nominative, an unfinished declaration about the state of my heart. Really, it feels like an interjection, a cry of love and emptiness, of fullness and anguish. What tense would an interjection be?”

It was actually pretty powerful, that examination of how Jesus My Heart and my empty heart were interchangeable. Until I started trying to decline “cor…corde…cordis?”

This One’s Graphic

I’ll be honest. I could picture the graphs here, but it’s been almost 15 years since I took a math class, so I had to look up some of the functions.

“Lord, I used to think I was x³. Like, I grew a lot and I hit a plateau and soon I’ll break through and start shooting toward holiness. But I’m beginning to think I’m arctangent. There’s this horizontal asymptote I can’t break through. I just need to you to change my equation, Lord, if I’m going to be any better than I am now.”

Seriously, who prays about spiritual asymptotes?

A Different Kind of Nerd

While watching Frozen, sobbing, surrounded by 3-year-old girls singing their hearts out:

“That’s what I’ve done! I’ve built ice walls around my heart!!”

So there you have it, folks. There’s an old saying: Pray as you can, not as you can’t. So if you’re a nerd at heart, pray like a nerd. If you love movies, let movies speak to you. If you’re all about sports, try to imagine salvation like a football game. I’ve done all of the above. The only rule is that you have to be real. Beyond that, there’s nothing God doesn’t want to hear.