As a pastor and spiritual director, I spend a great deal of my time praying. I pray, and I help others in Christian friendship to pray, to learn to pray, to learn to listen to God in prayer. There's no doubt that prayer is important.
But I also spend time with folks who focus so exclusively on praying that they forget Christians also live.
That's Greg Darley's concern in Wasted Prayer: Know When God Wants You to Stop Praying and Start Doing. This book is pastoral advice for every Christian who prays: Start doing what God has called you to do.
So many of us treat God's will said it were a mystery to be solved, and prayer -- so many of us think -- is the key to that mystery.
Darley rightly contrasts this "Religious Cycle" with the "Discipleship Cycle" (pp. 29-30). So many Christians treat our prayers as reactionary monologues to God: Something happens and we need God to act. But Darley points out that so many of the biblical narratives (the parable of the Good Samaritan, for example) are the exact opposite. Our praying should be "proactive", and our lives lived in response to God's call to loving, kind service.
The Cycle of Discipleship is meant to overcome the procrastination, isolation, and pride of the Religious Cycle. Only through saying "yes" to God, in community, with humility, can our prayers become rich and full.
Darley's Wasted Prayer is a beautiful little book. The problem with my praying is often wrapped up inside that cycle of religiosity. It's then that my praying becomes just another procrastination. And it's only as I've broken free of that procrastination that my intimacy with God has grown in its obedience.
Prayer is such a safe inaction for some Christians. As the leader of the International Justice Mission's College Mobalization team, Greg Darley sees it often. And he provides us with the biblical alternative: Faith and prayer without works is always dead. They simply can't exist.
Because discipleship is always and only about doing God's will in Jesus Christ. No vital, living faith without that doing. Which means praying can be wasted. It can keep us from obedience.
Doubtless the book's title will be incidiary for some folks. But its content won't be. This is a beautiful little book about Christian living -- and I can't recommend it too much or too often.
Being a disciple means acting, not just praying.
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