Mindless chatter

So, my roommate and I were talking about communication and prayer tonight. A big point we discussed was "filler words." I think it's interesting how much we hate silence in prayers. With how we pray, someone might think it must be a sin to speak slowly or to even stop for a second before saying something else. It might even seem like we're trying to fast-talk God into coming through on our prayers. We fall into this thing where we think the more words we can sputter out in succession, the more real our prayers are. We spout out words without even thinking about what we're saying to God. I wonder how many "uhhhs," "likes," and "justs" are stuck in our prayers perpetually. A good speaker avoids these words at all costs. Why, when we learn to not say these words in speech classes, do we let our vocabulary slacken in our prayers? If we avoid these words in talking to people, shouldn't we avoid them in talking to our Creator?

My roommate brought up a fantastic analogy to go with this. The story of Cain and Abel in the Bible illustrates how Abel brought a fantastic sacrifice, best of what he had, while Cain basically brought the leftovers of what he had. Abel's sacrifice was obviously better. Bringing this back to the conversation, it's not that God won't understand out prayers if we use too many fillers; it's more about how we're bringing the best we can to Him, even in our communication with Him.

Besides all this, when we're praying in public, our bad communication habits can be extremely distracting for others and bring their thoughts away from God. When you use "uhh" every five words or so, and it's almost louder than the actual words in your prayer...I'm sorry, but I can't handle that. It's ok to stop and think instead of jamming noise into your prayers. Again, why is silence such a bad thing to us?

I may have mentioned this in a previous blog, but one peeve I have in particular is the word "just." Think of it this way: "God, would You just do this" really means "God, would You do only this one thing,"...but we use "just" at least five times per prayer. To me, that's like lying right to God's face. "God, I'm only asking for this one thing. I'm also only asking for this other one thing. Oh yeah, and only this other thing as well."

Even through all this communication policing, we still can't be overly distracted by what we're saying, or else we fall into selfishness in our prayers. "Oh man, I have to sound good, or else...." If we're worried about how others think of us when we pray, who are we even praying to? Certainly not God, because He wants our full attention on Himself. This goes back again to giving our best for God. He doesn't want meaningless chatter, but he also doesn't want us focusing on ourselves and our words. He wants meaningful, relational conversation and love from us.

Just some thoughts. Comment or talk to me in person.

Peace.