The One Necessary Thing

Have you ever talked with someone who constantly complains about how hard their life is but they won’t do anything about it? Maybe you have a friend who’s constantly complaining about how hard things are financially but they won’t live on a budget, they won’t go to budgeting classes, and they definitely won’t cut back on their spending or cut up their credit cards. Or you talk with someone who says they’re lonely, but every suggestion you make about joining a small group or volunteering is met with a series of reasons it won’t work for them. Or you talk with someone who complains all the time about various aches and pains, but beginning a sensible program of diet and exercise is simply out of the question. Do you know those people? Some of us see those people every day in the mirror. Change is hard.

How, then, do we live the Jesus life? How do we become the people Jesus wants us to be? Let me begin by sharing two truths of the spiritual life. The first is...

Spiritual growth is not automatic

When I was a boy, growing up playing basketball in a small town on Lake Erie, I would often pretend to be a pro basketball player as I was shooting around in the backyard. I’d say something like, “Okay, it’s the 7th game of the NBA finals. The Bucks,” don’t ask me why I liked a team from Milwaukee, “are down by one. There’s just seconds left. Warner has the ball in the right corner. The clock is ticking down. Three seconds to shoot! He elevates, he shoots, he scores! The crowd is going wild. The Bucks are World Champions!” Of course, there was absolutely no way I was ever going to hit a buzzer-beater in an NBA title game. I couldn’t do it in a Junior High game. I couldn’t do it when I was completely unguarded in my backyard. Yet, I pretended to be Lucius Allen or Oscar Robertson or some other player, emulating my heroes. The next generation did exactly the same thing. They pretended to be Larry Bird or Magic Johnson or Michael Jordan.

Here’s the problem. As Dallas Willard pointed out in The Renovation of the Heart, we can’t play basketball like Michael Jordan because we lack the talent and the discipline. We haven’t put in four hours of shooting practice every day for the last twenty years. We don’t watch what we eat or run stairs or lift weights. Even if you have the talent, you can’t hope to play like Michael Jordan unless you live Michael Jordan’s life. And you can’t play the piano like Van Clyburn or Chopin or Rachmaninoff unless you have their natural talent and you discipline yourself to practice as much as they practiced.

The same thing applies to the Christian life. We can’t do what Jesus told us to do simply by wearing a little bracelet that says, “What Would Jesus Do?” Wearing a bracelet is okay if it reminds you that being a Christian involves imitating Jesus. But you won’t be able to imitate Jesus unless you put into your life the practices that enabled Jesus to do what Jesus did. You can’t just say, “I’m going to do it. I’m going to love my enemies. I’m going to stop being anxious. I’m going to forgive people who’ve hurt me.” Just marking time as a believer in Jesus will not bring about spiritual growth in your life. Just because you’re older doesn’t mean you’re getting better. You might be getting bitter. Becoming like Jesus is not automatic. Here’s the second truth of the spiritual life.

The most important spiritual disciple is learning to pray

Luke 3:21 says, "When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized, too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened 22 and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: 'You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.'"

Jesus was a man of prayer. And if there’s one secret to doing the Christian life, if there’s one thing that would enable you to regularly speak the words of Christ and do the works of Christ, it’s the practice of prayer. Every great Christian writer for the past two thousand years has said that there’s nothing more important you can do to grow as a follower of Jesus than to learn to pray.

“Prayer catapults us onto the frontier of the spiritual life. Of all the spiritual disciplines, prayer is the most central because it ushers us into perpetual communion with the Father. Meditation introduces us to the inner life, fasting is an accompanying means, study transforms our minds, but it is the Discipline of prayer that brings us into the deepest and highest work of the human spirit. Real prayer is life creating and life changing. ‘Prayer – secret, fervent, believing prayer – lies at the root of all personal godliness,’ writes William Carey.

To pray is to change. Prayer is the central avenue God uses to transform us. If we are unwilling to change, we will abandon prayer as a notable characteristic of our life. The closer we come to the heartbeat of God, the more we see our need and the more we desire to be conformed to Christ. If we desire to conform to the image of Christ, we will learn how to pray (The Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster).”

To pray is to change! Do you want to change? Think about it. How would your relationship with God change if, instead of seeing prayer as a duty to fulfill, you actually enjoyed praying? What if prayer was less of an intellectual task, where you’re always having to think about how to frame your requests, and you could learn to just “be” with God? What if, when you’re frustrated, distracted or confused, you could simply retreat into His presence and find peace and strength? What if you could get God’s perspective on a person or situation enabling you to respond with patient wisdom instead of reacting out of your limited assumptions? What if you could free yourself from the mechanics of trying to pray the right way and allow yourself to be still and know that God is God? What if prayer was no longer hard work but a source of rest and new possibilities, a meeting of two hearts? What if, when you have nothing important to say to God, you could simply be satisfied in the divine rhythm of coming and going, working and resting? As Jan Johnson wrote, “Finding a good plan [for prayer] is not our chief goal; rather living in the company of God is.”

Note: This quote and much of the framing for this section is from When the Soul Listens by Jan Johnson, chapter 1.