The Power Of Prayer And The 12-Steps

“Please pray for my sister. We will be praying for you. Pray that we’ll have good weather for the picnic. I’m just praying that no one gets hurt tomorrow. Please pray that God will step in and change their mind. Pray for this country. God please bless this greasy cheeseburger for the nourishment of my body. Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. Just walk down this aisle and pray this simple prayer and all will be well. Pray for the little kids in Africa who have no food.” I could go on and on.

Have you ever been to a group meeting of some kind and at the end someone took some prayer request and then commenced to try to talk God into doing, changing or fixing some situation, illness or event? It’s like if they can just get the right wording, the correct tuning or maybe just have enough faith, the God of the Universe is going to make it all better. All we have to do is just pray and God will step in and save the day. It’s almost as good as having a genie in a bottle. I say almost, because with the genie you know where you stand. Three wishes, so you better make em good. With God and prayer, it kind of seems like a shot in the dark.

This series of blog post has been about spirituality and how it differs from religion. How leading a spiritual life can lead to fulfillment and peace. How spirituality can give you a sense of wholeness instead of feeling like you have a hole in you. How the spiritual life can take you to a state of consciousness like no place you have ever been. How living by the spirit will bring Heaven down to earth and allow you to be a full-time resident, RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW!

I’m pretty sure from the intro you can tell where I am going with this one. You guessed it, prayer.

If you ask twenty people about prayer, you are going to get twenty different answers or definitions. Some will laugh and say its just part of a fairy tale. Others will get all teary eyed and tell you about how they were healed from some horrible disease. Some traditions will tell you how they face a certain direction on their knees three times a day. The stories are endless. What I want to do today is share with you a story about me and my journey with prayer, not a theological study or some walk through a bunch of Bible verses, just a look at prayer through my eyes.

To me prayer was always something you did to try to get your way. Prayer was how the faithful of the world controlled God and got what they wanted. To a little kid it looked like a pretty sweet system. I mean Santa only came once a year, but Jesus, Jesus was always with us. He was like a 24/7 holiday. The only real problem was it didn’t seem like very many people were doing it right. They weren’t getting the best of results.

Now, let us take a quantum leap from my childhood to my late twenties. At this stage in life the only thing that was any different was my age. I was still pretty childish in most ways. My understanding of prayer had not grown with me. I looked like a man but acted like a child. The period between my early teens and this stage in life had been cloaked in a haze of smokes, liquids and magic powders. As Charles Dickens would say, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” By my late twenties it was pretty much the worst of times.

Now let me set the stage for you. My prayer encounter took place just before I began my journey down the road of recovery. One might say it was the catalyst which began my journey of recovery. I had two friends who were trying to share with me a different way of life. A way of life which included the 12-steps but didn’t include any magic powders. A way of life which included spiritual principles but didn’t include any funny smelling smokes. A way of life which required a new way of thinking but didn’t include my old thoughts and ideas. A way of life which required change. All this new way of life stuff didn’t seem like much fun to me at first. It meant giving up the old. Giving up the familiar. Giving up the “fun”. Who really wants to do all of that?

You hear people talk about times in their lives when the stars lined up. When everything in the universe seemed to be steering them in a certain direction. A time when change was inevitable. Nothing could explain this period of my life better. The stage was set. I was riding the fence. What would it be, “go on to the bitter end blotting out the consciousness of my intolerable situation as best I could, or accept spiritual help” (Alcoholics Anonymous p. 25). Would I keep getting high or would I try something new? I was almost there. I was almost at “rock bottom”. For most people “rock bottom” would have occurred many moons before it did for me. Losing my family, my freedom, my home and countless other material possessions was not enough. Even after losing it all I was still like the old dog who returns to his vomit for just one more taste (that’s a quote from somewhere ;).

Hang with me, this is where the story gets beautiful. I had a situation in my life that no matter how hard I tried, I could not fix it. It was one of those situations which can change your life forever. I was totally consumed with trying to make it go away. I was at the end of my rope. I couldn’t fix it and it was totally out of my control. This is when I got the best advise of my life. One of the two friends I mentioned earlier suggested I, “give it to God”. This is where I lost it! That was NOT the solution I was after.

With nowhere else to turn I asked my friend just exactly how to “give this to God”. He simply said for me to get on my knees daily and ask God to make me alright with whatever happened. Now this may sound normal to you. To me this was crazy talk. Make me alright? Why not fix the situation? Luckily, I had the gift of desperation. I had nowhere left to turn. So, I did just what he said. Every morning I would get up and prayed that God would change me and my attitude on the situation. That’s when the miracle happened. After a period of time, I realized that I was going to survive no matter what happened.

Step 11 in the 12-steps states, “Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood. Praying only for the knowledge of Gods will for us and the power to carry that out.” Through the steps and the wisdom of a good friend, I was totally blind sided with this new outlook on prayer. Prayer is about lining my life and heart up with the heart of the Creator. It has nothing to do with me receiving something or making my case known to God, so it will make things happen the way I think they should. It is simply about lining me up with him. The beauty of this is that I can now tap into the Power Source that has the ability to change my whole attitude and outlook on life. Now that is Good News!

The Idea of the 12-step program is to grow in the spirit. It is an opportunity for us to totally engage with the fullness of life. For me, this new concept of prayer did just that. I no longer had to worry about how everyone else was acting. All that was needed for a life filled with serenity, peace and contentment was to pray for the knowledge of His will and then have the courage to carry it out. WOW! That sounds like Heaven on earth, sign me up!