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Given the feedback from last week’s post, I decided I’d go a layer deeper into the subject of prayer. This growing audience comes from many backgrounds, some religious and others not. Regardless, we all share some common assumptions regarding prayer, and I want to invite all comers, religious and otherwise, through this conversation and into a graced experience. If our goal is personal transformation in 2025, not failed resolutions, then we must experience true prayer, because that’s what opens up the depth dimension of life.

It’s a mistake to conclude that unbeliever’s cannot pray. Our world is (rightly) increasingly skeptical of the Religious Industrial Complex and its multi-billion dollar “prayer business.” Depending on the Institutional power (éxousian), the act of prayer might be regulated and validated, or sold as being “outside the reach” of the Agnostic or skeptic. Pastors site Hebrews 11:6 which says: “And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” Yes, there is a qualitative difference in prayer as our faith grows, but there is no measure of faith so small that prayer isn’t possible. This makes this series applicable for everyone, no matter who you are or where you begin.

I’ll now jump to the punch line of this post and anyone who wants to explore this conclusion can journey with me. The perfect prayer does exist, but it will not meet your expectations. The perfect prayer doesn’t have a certain structure, an established duration, a format, anything to memorize, a subject matter, nor does it necessarily produce what the praying person seeks...it may not even have any words. The perfect prayer is horribly imperfect. It’s messy. Disjointed. Lacks flow and continuity, and would not be appropriate for most ceremonies, or even church services. By all external measurements, the perfect prayer could be called anything but perfect.

“You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48)

This passage begins Jesus teaching on prayer. The Greek word téleios means perfect, genuine, complete, mature, initiated or real. The perfect prayer is our real prayer. Sincerity doesn’t make a prayer real. Desperation doesn’t make it real either, although both can lead to a real prayer. When Jesus points out how hypocrites pray in the synagogue, He’s pointing out that religion clearly doesn’t make a prayer real. The person “under a mask” is presenting falsehood and when a false self prays, he or she becomes a religious false self. So I ask: what is the value of false selves praying?

“The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” (James 5:16)

The perfect prayer is active, it’s dynamic not static, and it works. However, “working” doesn’t necessarily mean that a “wish will be granted” but that this “righteous” (put right) person will be “ìáomai” (renewed, healed). The perfect prayer is a self in the process of being put right and renewed. The big discovery is that these need not be the subject of the prayer, but are instead prayer’s effect.

I spent the work week in a conference and my colleague and I were discussing the difference between a person “going in their hole” and “going in their closet.” When the circumstances of life pile up and begin to overwhelm us, we tend to go and hide. However, some people go into a figurative, but self-destructive hole, while others go into a closet. The hole is marked by self-pity, angry scripts replaying like a broken record, plans to get even, harm others, sabotage oneself, or escape. Essentially a “hole” is disintegrated coping where healing doesn’t take place.

Contrast this to the “closet”, a term I borrow from Matthew.

“But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” (Matthew 6:6)

In our closet, God is (kruptōi-hidden, private, secret) where we withdraw from the “crowds,” close our door, and regain our bearings. It’s the sanctity of isolation, and in hiddenness we have sobriety to process our state of being. Time in the closet (restores) our navigation instruments, and helps us forge a healthier path forward than just reacting. As my colleague discussed her experience, I suggested she wasn’t in a “hole” but in “prayer.” This hiding prayer is common to all people, and most wouldn’t call it a prayer, and instead we skim over this depth dimension and forsake healing.

I’ve shown the perfect prayer is when we are “put right” and “renewed.” These hidden times of sanctity and solitude have the effect of putting all of us right, so long as we aren’t overcome by feeling sorry for ourselves. If this hiding causes us to reflect on our circumstances, stressors, and pain, and we observe our reactions, emotions, and we make a determination to live out a healthier strategy for life, then this proves we are not hiding in ourself, but in God. The inner dialogue is not “self-talk,” it’s prayer. Religion invalidates our closet a true experience of prayer, so there is little instruction on how to cultivate this graced contemplation. Fortunately, we don’t need it.

I told you this wouldn’t meet our expectations as the perfect prayer. Religion insists that the only valid prayer is a conscious conversation with God requiring the pre-requisite of belief. While this also falls under the umbrella of prayer, that tribal version is precisely why our prayer lives suck, and why so many praying mistakenly believe that they don’t pray.

oIf we can fog a mirror and have any amount of conscious awareness, then we are praying. Certainly there’s greater depth to prayer, but we all start somewhere. Just asking: “Is that You?” starts us off. As we discover our real self in our “closet of solitude,” the hidden yet boundless abyss of God’s love wells up and overflows as Reality itself in the form of that which we call “our life.” Prayer then becomes palpable and self-evident, and we discover the entirety of life is lived within it.

I’ll take a contemplative life of true seeing (beyond everything), over a memorized ritual of religion.

I hope all listeners will come with me into this discussion and graced experience. By removing the religious rite and its distracting external accouterments which give us nothing, this perfect prayer of existence (ontological center), is where we all start, and amazingly, it’s where we all end. As we become intentional about our hiddenness in God, we’ll discover an entirely New World, an entire Kingdom that has always existed within each of us. If this sounds unbelievable or too good to be true, then all you have to do to test it, is sit still...if you can.