Praying and Such

Kathy Keller speaking at this year's TGC Women's Conference

I've just been in a terrible mood today. I've confessed, prayed about it -- and there is still a black cloud not OVER my head, but encircling it, blocking my vision and muffling my hearing. Some of this mood I understand, some of it I don't.

I have a ton on my plate right now. When I have a lot to do, I procrastinate. It's horrible. But in this case, I was blessed. See, what I did was listen to the talk that Kathy Keller gave at The Gospel Coalition Women's Conference a couple of weeks ago. I heard it at the conference, but to be honest -- I'd pretty much forgotten it. It was exactly what I needed to hear today. Here are some of the snippets that helped me.

The talk was supposed to be about prayer, but she talked for a good while about suffering because that's when so many people pray. Just a constant stream of "Help! Help!" going up and after the crisis has passed more perfunctory (and fewer) prayers arise. According to Kathy, you can't learn to pray rightly if your only prayers come from when you're suffering.

She mentioned that prayers must proceed from a grateful heart. She confessed that her own disposition is one more prone to whining than gratitude, and that a lack of gratitude is really a case of forgetting or undervaluing the gifts that God has given us. And she said something else that really struck me. She mentioned things like life and freedom and how we consider them to be "rights." But they're not rights at all -- they are gifts, and whichever way we choose to view them will truly affect the way we pray.

Isn't that good? I really love that. It kind of rebooted my attitude about things. Not that my bad mood is entirely gone because it's not. But I seem to be headed in the right direction.

Here is a link if you'd like to listen to Kathy's talk.