I received a call today from a worker at Teen Mania who is responsible for organizing a youth event called Acquire the Fire. I took our high schoolers to an ATF event last year and vowed never to do it again for reasons I'll refrain from posting about here.
So anyways, I talked to this girl a little bit about why we would not be attending this year's event, which went fine only to lead her to ask me a question...can I pray for you? I was like, "sure."
And then it began...
God we just thank you............Father.......Lord..........God............Father.........I have no idea what she said during the "............" because all I could focus on was how many times she was using God, Lord, and Father as commas. Since when did we decide to use God's name as a way to begin and end a sentence or connect two sentences together. Is this proper English? Could there be a more distracting way of praying?
Lord.........God...................Father..............God............Father..............Lord.......
God.........God.........Father.................God..............Lord....................Lord...........
.......Amen
Reader, as I close out this post, Audience, I just want to take time, Reader, to encourage you to not use God as a comma, Friend, and think more about what you are saying, Blog Follower, when you pray, Earthling, and not just babble, Homosapien, as some have the tendency to do, Evolved Primate, and by the way, Person, thank you for the food. Amen. So be it.
11 comments:
Todd,
I was responsible for the ATF event last year in Kansas City. I'm sorry you had a negative experience....I would love to connect sometime to find out what happened. I'm always looking for ways to improve...
Tanya
903-324-8223
tanya.hoff@teenmania.org
for those who follow this blog, i did respond to tanya. i appreciate her willingness to hear about our negative experience.
i also want to say that I meant no harm to the girl who prayed for me on the phone. its not her fault as she has probably grown up hearing prayer as she did it. i appreciate her willingness to pray for me.
Ya know Todd, I've noticed that quite a few people do this. In my discipleship team, we have one guy that does the same thing, except he consistently says Father God. I've always wondered about this too. It almost seems that they are just recognizing God as much as they can but I have no idea for the reason.
Kyle
Very interesting and I think one of the reasons that people less familiar with churches and such get intimidated away from God (or at least gathering with people to worship God).
Todd, I'm so glad to hear someone else express these thoughts. I would never say anything to someone, but I agree with you, it is annoying. I don't know if it is a "young" Christian thing, b/c Kyle mentioned he has seen it too. Whatever the reason, I've found myself distracted by it as well.
I always think the same thing when I hear it. There's a guy that does chapel at the mission who says "Oh God" as his comma. One time I wanted to count the "Oh Gods" in the prayer, but lost count when it cracked me up when he "Oh God"ed an "Oh God."
I find that there must be a lot of people named "weejus" who pray. For example, wejus pray for so and so to get better. Wejus pray for your hand to be upon sister sally. Wejus pray that Billy will get better. Wejus thank you for a great day........
Hmmmm................
ah yes, good ol' Father Wejus
I found your blog after your comment! I have to say that I know exactly who Kyle is talking about and if I think that the kid were open to me talking with him about it, I would do it! :) I remember a time in seminary after a classmate opened the class with prayer that the professor (Joel Green) said, "You can tell a lot about a person's theology by their prayer." I'm not sure what is the theology behind the God=Comma prayers, but perhaps that the pray-er can't think of enough to say to/about God (scary!). It's certainly a learned pattern, more prevalent in some circles! :)
Nice to meet you at BIM week!
Maybe telling her your feelings would have been a better choice than posting it for everyone else to see.
It is unfortunate that you felt it necessary to post this. I can only imagine what the person who prayed for you might feel if she read your post. The fact that she offered to pray for you should be the only thing taken into consideration here. This person did not measure up to your expectations but how does she measure up to God's??
anonymous, i will defer you to what i said in an earlier comment.
"i also want to say that I meant no harm to the girl who prayed for me on the phone. its not her fault as she has probably grown up hearing prayer as she did it. i appreciate her willingness to pray for me."
clearly there are others out there who feel as i do about such prayers. i am not judging the one who prayed for me and i don't think she should care at all about meeting my expectations. what i hoped to convey with my post was a more conscious approach to prayer. i have my own idiosyncrasies that i too must be careful about using when i pray.
thank you for sticking up for the girl who prayed for me, and if you happen to be her, i apologize if i hurt you.
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