When I pray, my default mindset is that it is just me talking to God. It is personal and private, like Jesus’s instructions to his disciples from Matthew 6:6 – “But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret.” Prayer is not performative. It is not to impress people.
I somehow missed that while prayer is not for other people, it is always with other people. While prayer is often private, it is not isolated. Jesus goes on to say, “Pray then like this: ‘Our Father in heaven. . .’” Our Father. So even as we pray on our own, we are connected to every other Jesus follower and member of the family of God. As we pray, we are talking with the Father we all share. In a sense, we pray with every other believer, so we are not alone in our aloneness.
We are not alone in the weight of our confessions and requests. We are not alone in our rejoicing. We are connected through our Father. Every time we pray, we get to experience an aspect of what the Apostle’s Creed calls “the communion of saints.” May this miraculous reality encourage and bolster us in our communion with God and each other.
I originally wrote this post for my church, Immanuel Nashville, in our Daily Pulse email. If you want encouragement from God’s word delivered Monday thru Friday to your inbox, I encourage you to subscribe!
