Grayson Pope

How to Study Culture

You can’t engage what you don’t understand.

That might seem obvious, but if we’re honest, many Christians don’t really understand the world around them. It’s easy to disappear into a Christian subculture with our own music, radio stations, books, and websites, to the point that we’re not really existing in the larger culture.

But we can’t leverage our culture’s stories to explain the gospel without knowing both the gospel and the stories. We’ll circle back to knowing the gospel shortly, but for now, let’s talk about knowing culture’s stories.

Get to Know Culture’s Stories

How do you get to know culture’s stories? You learn what’s out there and seek to understand it.

Does that mean you should watch all the movies and shows everyone’s talking about at work, or spend your money on all the same things? No.

You don’t have to watch Game of Thrones to know about it. You don’t have to listen to music that’s degrading to women to hear what they’re saying. Instead, you can learn about these things through cultural commentators whose job it is to know what’s going on in the world.

Become a student of the culture around you, especially those aspects of culture that may be of least interest you but of most interest to those around you.

Studying culture will look different for everyone. To give you an idea of what this is like in my life, here are some of the ways I learn about culture:

Online articles

I read and subscribe to lots of free online publications, both secular and Christian, like The Atlantic (a progressive, secular outlet), The Gospel Coalition (a conservative, Christian outlet), The New York Times (a liberal, secular outlet), Christianity Today (a moderate, Christian outlet), and ERLC (the Ethics & Religious Liberties Commission of the SBC; a conservative, Christian outlet). If I want to know what conservatives are thinking and talking about, I’ll check FOX News. If I want to know what liberals are thinking, I’ll check CNN.

Each of these provides a unique cultural view and help me understand how people who belong to those cultures see the world. But regardless of which outlets you choose to read, try and balance your intake to hear from multiple sides of culture.

Podcasts

This is probably my favorite form of media right now. Podcasts are basically radio-like programs that you download to your phone. There are all kinds of shows, but one of my favorites is The World and Everything In It from World Radio. It’s like NPR from a Christian worldview. It’s definitely conservative, but it helps you approach the day’s new with eyes of faith. Al Mohler’s The Briefing is another great daily overview of the headlines from a Christian perspective. If you want to know what the more liberal, culture makes of the news, there are daily news digests from The New York Times (The Daily), NPR (Up First), and others. Film and TV podcasts like the Slashfilmcast are great for listening to reviews and overviews of some of the most culture-shaping artforms.

Social media

Most major news outlets and reporters are active on social media. Your mileage may vary when it comes to the ease of use or enjoyment of these platforms, like Twitter and Facebook, but if leveraged the right way, they can be helpful sources of cultural study. For instance, I’ve used Twitter for several years as both a way to share information and to keep an eye on what’s going on in the broader American culture. Doing this well requires careful curation of who you follow.

Books

Obviously, books can be very helpful sources of cultural study. But what may be less known is that book lists and book review outlets can help you get a quick understanding of what books are shaping the cultural conversation. This can be as easy as looking up the New York Times bestseller list or Amazon’s best sellers and reading the descriptions of several of the top sellers, or more involved, like reading the New York Times book reviews or New York Review of Books, the Gospel Coalition’s book reviews, or Kirkus Reviews.

I know what you’re thinking: that sounds like a lot of work. And in some ways, it is.

But think about it like this. If you were to go overseas as a missionary in a country you had never visited that spoke a language you didn’t know, you would do lots of homework to learn how to communicate the gospel effectively to the people there.

So why don’t we do the same thing here? We are missionaries sent to a particular place in a particular country with plenty of people who don’t know the gospel. As Christ’s ambassadors, one of our jobs is to understand the culture we live in so we can effectively share the gospel with the people around us.

To that end, the most important way to engage culture and learn how to speak into it is to talk to people in it.

People

We can read all the books and watch all the movies we want, but nothing prepares us to speak into it like speaking into it.

Talk to your neighbors. Talk to your coworkers. Talk to your friends and family. Spend time understanding them so you can reach them for Christ.

Be hospitable. Invite your neighbors over for dinner. Take coworkers out to lunch. Meet people for coffee. Do something to reach out to and love on your neighbors. Hospitality lets people know you care about them, and it creates opportunities for conversations about faith, which ties into asking good questions.

When you’re talking to people, ask good questions that get them to go below the surface.

I don’t know about you, but when I’m around people I don’t know well, or even people I do, it’s easy to stay on the surface. It’s safer there. I don’t have to tell you what I believe or what I think. I don’t have to be vulnerable.

Do the heavy lifting

The thing about us is that we want to go deep, we just don’t want to make the first move.

We don’t want to do the heavy lifting in the conversation, but we want someone to ask us about something that really matters.

Do the heavy lifting. Ask good questions. When someone tells you they had a good weekend, ask them what they did. When they tell you what they did, ask them why they find those things fun.

When someone tells you they had a crazy day at work, ask them what they mean. When they tell you what they mean, ask them how the difficult moments made them feel.

Say things like “Tell me more about that,” or “What do you mean by that?” or “How did that make you feel?”

Proverbs 20:5 says, “Counsel in a person’s heart is deep water; but a person of understanding draws it out.” Draw out the counsel in a person’s heart, bit by bit. Most people have plenty to say if you take the time to listen and ask good questions.

Do Your Cultural Homework

God has you in your family, your neighborhood, your workplace, and your community because he wants you to speak the gospel to the people in those particular cultures.

But you can’t do that well if you don’t know the stories those people are living and breathing.

So do some cultural homework. Read some stuff, listen to some things, but most importantly, talk to some people — for God’s glory and neighbor’s good.

How to Determine Which Parts of Culture are OK to Engage

I mentioned in my last post that I would cover what to do when you’re trying to determine if a Christian can participate in a particular aspect of culture.

If a particular form of cultural engagement causes you to disobey one of God’s commands, you shouldn’t participate in it. Simple. Sometimes it’s obvious what we shouldn’t participate in.

Pornography is an easy example. It’s an industry built on sin, and it’s impossible to participate in it without sinning. So there’s simply no way our Christian conscience should let us participate in it.

But it’s not always so black and white, is it? What about watching popular shows like Game of Thrones or viewing classic works of art that depict nude figures? Can a Christian participate in these kinds of culture?

Let’s build a biblical framework for thinking through how to determine if a particular aspect of culture is something you can engage in.

No Worthless Things

The first text that comes to mind here is Psalm 101:3, which says, “I will not let anything worthless guide me,” or more literally, “I will not put a worthless thing in front of my eyes.”

When it comes to evaluating a particular aspect of culture, such as a movie, show, book, or product, we should ask ourselves, Is this worthless? Does it contribute anything of value? Is it redeeming in any way?

If the object in question falls under that “worthless” category, then we shouldn’t engage it. No further analysis needed.

But Paul takes this one step further. He says that even if something is acceptable to engage in, that doesn’t mean it’s best.

Just Because You Can, it Doesn’t Mean You Should

In 1 Corinthians 6:12, Paul writes, “‘Everything is permissible for me,’ but not everything is beneficial. ‘Everything is permissible for me,’ but I will not be mastered by anything.”

If you look at this verse, you’ll notice that there within Paul’s quotation are two phrases set in quotation marks, which means that Paul is quoting someone or something else. It’s the phrase, “Everything is permissible for me.” Commentators believe Paul is referring to a popular Corinthian slogan.

Regarding this verse, the notes in my ESV Study Bible say,

The Corinthians have adopted from the culture around them the idea that the body is permitted to have everything that it craves.

Notice two things. First, Paul gives us a “yes, but” scenario. He says, yes, everything may be permissible for me because I am free in Christ, but that doesn’t mean everything is beneficial, or helpful, for me. Just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should.

The second thing to note about this verse is why Paul says we shouldn’t do some things. I like how my ESV Study Bible puts this:

Paul knows that human desires are tainted with sin, which uses these desires to master the person for its own evil purposes.

We all desire to participate in the worldly parts of culture. But our desires are not pure. They are tainted with sin. And sin will pounce on our ungodly desires and master us if we’re not careful.

So yes, we can participate in many aspects of our culture. But just because we can, it doesn’t mean we should.

More on Cultural Engagement

If you want to read more about cultural engagement, I’ve written about why Christians should engage culture, and postures we can take for cultural engagement.

As I said in one of those posts, when Jesus engaged the culture, he rubbed off on them, not the other way around. He ate with sinners but he didn’t sin with sinners. That’s what effective cultural engagement looks like. To be in the world but not of it; working in the world without being stained by it.

And the only way to pull that off is to first engage with Christ. The Spirit of Christ has to have taken up residence in our heart, soul, mind, and strength before we can engage the culture for him. Then and only then will we be prepared to engage the culture.

3 Biblical Postures for Cultural Engagement

Christians should be engaging the culture. As I wrote recently, we Christians (just like anyone) can’t avoid culture any more than a fish can avoid water.

But we don’t engage culture just because we can’t avoid it. We engage culture because it’s part of our calling. The whole counsel of Scripture calls us to engage the world around us so we can speak the gospel into it.

But how do you do that? And how do you do it without compromising your faith or the integrity of the gospel?

The book of Daniel shows us three postures for engaging culture.

Why the Book of Daniel?

I’m pulling these lessons from Daniel for good reason. For some quick background, Daniel was a prophet of God that lived during Israel’s exile to Babylon. Because of Israel’s continual disobedience, God sent the Babylonian army to destroy Jerusalem and send the people into exile.

Babylon was known for its cruelty and gruesomeness when conquering other nations, but interestingly, they didn’t just try and kill everyone in these nations and wipe out their cultures. Babylonians noticed that persecuting religious or ethnic minorities led to unrest and political instability, so they decided to try something new.

Babylonian kings told those they conquered that they were welcome to keep their gods and customs, as long as they conformed to the Babylonian way of life. As long as they kept their culture and religion to themselves, they would be fine. This is called cultural assimilation, and it’s the same pressure we face in America.

Babylon would assimilate other cultures into theirs until those that had been assimilated couldn’t tell one culture from the other. They did this by capturing the best and brightest a culture had to offer and indoctrinating them in the Babylonian culture. Which brings us to Daniel:

The [Babylonian] king ordered Ashpenaz, his chief eunuch, to bring some of the Israelites from the royal family and from the nobility—young men without any physical defect, good-looking, suitable for instruction in all wisdom, knowledgeable, perceptive, and capable of serving in the king’s palace. He was to teach them the Chaldean language and literature. —Daniel 1:3-4

The king’s goal for Daniel and his friends was to assimilate them into their culture so that the Babylonian culture would then permeate the Jewish culture, rendering it ineffective and non-threatening.

Because God’s favor is on him, Daniel quickly rose to the top of the class and became one of the king’s most trusted advisors. So here’s Daniel, who was raised as a young boy to fear the one true God, serving in the bureaucracy of a pagan nation that had just murdered many of the people he grew up with and desecrated his city. How in the world could he serve God faithfully in that setting?

We’re going to learn three lessons from Daniel’s story about how to faithfully engage culture. The first is non-participation.

Posture 1: Non-Participation

Remember, Daniel and his friends had just been taken into the king’s custody and were being told to eat and drink the king’s diet. Let’s pick up with the story, starting at verse 8:

Daniel determined that he would not defile himself with the king’s food or with the wine he drank. So he asked permission from the chief eunuch not to defile himself. God had granted Daniel kindness and compassion from the chief eunuch, yet he said to Daniel, “I fear my lord the king, who assigned your food and drink. What if he sees your faces looking thinner than the other young men your age? You would endanger my life with the king.”

So Daniel said to the guard whom the chief eunuch had assigned to Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, “Please test your servants for ten days. Let us be given vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then examine our appearance and the appearance of the young men who are eating the king’s food, and deal with your servants based on what you see.” —Daniel 1:8-13

Daniel had a choice to make: he could participate or not participate in the diet, meaning he could participate or not participate in this aspect of the Babylonian culture. But everyone else was participating? Surely Daniel could just wink at this, right?

No, he couldn’t. Daniel chose not to participate — non-participation — in this aspect of his culture because he knew he couldn’t eat the Babylonian diet and obey God’s commands at the same time. That’s how we should decide whether or not to engage in culture today.

(Now, not every situation is black and white. Sometimes it’s unclear if we can or cannot participate in a particular form of culture, but for the sake of space, I’ll have to explore that in a future post.)

Daniel chose non-participation despite the very real danger to his life because to do so would be against God’s commands. All of us will face moments where non-participation is called for. Our lives may not be endangered, but our reputations, or jobs, or savings, or relationships might be.

Posture 2: Faithful Presence

Daniel chose non-participation when a particular form of cultural engagement would cause him to disobey God’s commands. But what about those times when engagement wouldn’t cause us to disobey a direct command from God?

That brings us to the next lesson from Daniel’s life, which I’ll call faithful presence. Faithful presence is what it looks like to participate in a sinful culture in a godly way.

This lesson comes from all of Daniel chapter 2, where the Babylonian king is distraught over a dream and is looking for someone to interpret it for him. So he told the mediums, necromancers, magicians, and wise men that if they didn’t tell him what the dream was and interpret it, that he would have them and their families killed. Daniel was considered a wise man, so he was on the chopping block too.

The wise men were, naturally, in disbelief, because how could the king ask them to read his mind? No one can do that. But the king wasn’t backing down.

When word of the king’s decision made its way to Daniel, he was understandably grieved and afraid. Daniel hightailed it back to his house and told his buddies, and urged them to pray so that they, along with Babylon’s other wise men, wouldn’t be destroyed.

In the night, God came to Daniel in a vision and revealed the king’s dream and its interpretation to Daniel. Not wasting any time, Daniel found someone that trusted him in the king’s guard and pleaded with the guard to let him go before the king.

Here’s what happened next:

The king said in reply to Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar, “Are you able to tell me the dream I had and its interpretation?”

Daniel answered the king: “No wise man, medium, magician, or diviner is able to make known to the king the mystery he asked about. But there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and he has let King Nebuchadnezzar know what will happen in the last days. Your dream and the visions that came into your mind as you lay in bed were these: Your Majesty, while you were in your bed, thoughts came to your mind about what will happen in the future. The revealer of mysteries has let you know what will happen.

As for me, this mystery has been revealed to me, not because I have more wisdom than anyone living, but in order that the interpretation might be made known to the king, and that you may understand the thoughts of your mind. —Daniel 2:27-30

Daniel was forced to participate in his culture or he and his friends would be killed for an unjust cause. This was a time where participation in the culture was good and right.

Daniel’s answer reveals what that being a faithful presence starts with acknowledging God. Daniel told the king who thought he was the lord of the earth that there is a God in heaven who is actually the one in charge. And that God is in control of what happens to the king, his kingdom, and everything else.

But Daniel was also humble. He could have easily just taken credit for what he already knew. After all, God had already revealed the king’s dream and the interpretation to him.

You’ve no doubt found yourself in a similar situation where you could easily keep quiet about the God of the universe his Son who rose from the dead. In those moments, don’t forget to acknowledge God. Like Daniel said, God is the only reason any of us has anything to offer.

When you receive a promotion, are you quick to pat yourself on the back and allow others to sing your praises? It would be easy to do. What if you first acknowledged that God gave you the wisdom or work ethic or experience needed to get the promotion?

Posture 3: Resistance

The last lesson we’ll look at from Daniel’s life comes from the famous Daniel and the Lion’s Den story in Daniel chapter 6.

By this time, Daniel had risen through the ranks to be one of the king’s trusted satraps, or governors. The Lord blessed him in everything he did, so, naturally, the king loved him and his fellow governors hated him. They hated him so much, they decided to try and get him killed.

The only problem was they couldn’t find any faults with him. He was so competent and faithful that he was above reproach in every area of his life. But there was one thing they knew Daniel wouldn’t compromise—his God.

So they tricked the king into making a law that all Babylonian citizens were required to pray to the king alone. If anyone prayed to another god, they would be thrown into a den of lions. The trap was set, and the king’s decree went out to the nation. Daniel 6:10 records what happens next:

“When Daniel learned that the document had been signed, he went into his house. The windows in its upstairs room opened toward Jerusalem, and three times a day he got down on his knees, prayed, and gave thanks to his God, just as he had done before.”

Resistance is taking action to pursue obedience to God in defiance of a cultural norm. That’s exactly what Daniel was doing. He learned the document had been signed, so he went home.

What does he do at home? What he’s always done. He prays with the windows open, facing Jerusalem, giving thanks to God. He knowingly disobeys the newly established cultural norm because obeying the norm would mean disobeying God.

This is more than non-participation. This is Daniel taking action to resist the culture.

Each of us is presented with moments like these, probably more than we think. Have you ever found yourself in a culture of lying at work, where everyone fudges the numbers or slips an extra receipt on the expense report? Do you resist or give in?

Or maybe you’ve been out with other your married friends when they started bashing their spouse and they wanted to know what bugs you about yours. Do you resist or give in?

These are everyday moments. All of us are called on to take action to resist culture when participation would cause us to disobey God’s commands.

The Danger of Cultural Engagement

Now that I’ve covered these three postures for cultural engagement, let me say a quick word of caution. The danger with cultural engagement is that we enter the culture trying to influence it but we end up being influenced instead. Too many Christians set out to colonize the world and end up being colonized by it. That’s not what we’re after.

When Jesus engaged the culture, he rubbed off on them, not the other way around. He ate with sinners but he didn’t sin with sinners. That’s what effective cultural engagement looks like. To be in the world but not of it; working in the world without being stained by it.

And the only way to pull that off is to first be colonized by Christ. The Spirit of Christ has to have taken up residence in our heart, soul, mind, and strength before we can engage the culture for him.

So, please don’t engage the culture if you haven’t first engaged Christ. Otherwise, you have nothing to offer the culture that it doesn’t already have.

Engage with Christ through faith — spend time with him by reading his Bible and praying with him and seeking his insight. Then and only then will you or I or anyone else be truly prepared to engage the culture.

Should Christians Engage Culture?

There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?”

So begins the late David Foster Wallace’s 2005 address to the graduating class at Kenyon College. The fish in this parable are surrounded by water and have been for so long that they take it for granted. For fish, water is an unavoidable part of life that it defines and shapes every aspect of life, to the degree that it’s impossible for the mythical fish to imagine a world without it.

Culture is like water — we can’t avoid it any more than fish can avoid water.

But we don’t have to engage something just because it’s unavoidable. As long as there have been Christians, they have been debating the issue of cultural engagement. There are many viewpoints on this issue, but we have to start with a simple question: should Christians engage culture?

What is Culture?

Before we can answer that question, we need to define some terms. Let’s start with culture.

In his book, Culture Making, Andy Crouch says,

Culture is the fruit of the human quest for meaning in the world. Culture is both the things we make and the meaning we make in the world around us. Those things and meaning we produce are culture.

According to Crouch, as we make something of the world, whether through meaning or things, we’re making culture. That means when you bake a cake, you’re creating culture; when you develop a spreadsheet, you’re creating culture; when you take a family vacation and make memories, you’re creating culture.

Now let’s define “engage.” When we say “engaging” culture, we’re using engage as a verb. When used that way, it means “to participate or become involved in.” So to say Christians should be “engaging culture” means that they should become involved in culture, or participate in culture.

In one sense, it doesn’t make sense to say we should participate or become involved in culture, because all of us participates in several cultures already, such as our family’s culture or our workplace culture. But when Christians use the phrase “engaging culture,” what we usually mean is engaging non-Christians on their terms, in their culture.

So, to come back to our question, should Christians engage culture? Let’s see what the Bible says about culture.

What Genesis Says About Culture

Whenever we go to the Bible to see what it says about a topic, it’s a good idea to start at the beginning — the very beginning. So let’s go to the Creation account on the first page of the Bible. In Genesis 1:28, right after God made man, the Bible says,

God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that crawls on the earth.”

So here’s this brand new world filled with all the wildness of animals and plants and trees and oceans — a new world teeming with life and possibility. Then God creates Adam and Eve and tells them to subdue it and to rule it — to make something out of it — using the raw materials he has provided. And that’s essentially what culture is — the meaning and the things we make.

This verse, Genesis 1:28, is referred to as “the cultural mandate” — the mandate to make culture and renew the world for the glory of God. So from the first page of the Bible, we’re already talking about culture. But let’s keep going. And let’s just go straight to Jesus.

What Jesus Says About Culture

What did Jesus say about engaging culture? Well, when Jesus relayed what could be called his mission statement, or why he came to earth, he said,

For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10).

“The lost” refers to those who are living in sin apart from saving faith in himself. If Jesus came to seek the lost, that means he had to go and find them. And where would Jesus find the lost? In the culture, in the world, around him.

If Jesus was interested in seeking and saving the lost, which he clearly said he was, he had to enter into the culture to find them. So, clearly, Jesus was interested in engaging the culture.

What about Paul; what did he say about engaging culture?

What Paul Says About Culture

In perhaps his most far-reaching statement on cultural engagement, the Paul writes,

Although I am free from all and not anyone’s slave, I have made myself a slave to everyone, in order to win more people. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win Jews; to those under the law, like one under the law — though I myself am not under the law — to win those under the law. To those who are without the law, like one without the law — though I am not without God’s law but under the law of Christ — to win those without the law. To the weak I became weak, in order to win the weak. I have become all things to all people, so that I may by every possible means save some. Now I do all this because of the gospel, so that I may share in the blessings.”

—‭1 Corinthians‬ ‭9:19-23‬

Paul is saying that he engaged all sorts of cultures — Jew and Gentile, slave and free — in order to reach them with the gospel. Paul was clearly engaging the culture around him.

We also know that Paul and other New Testament writers quoted non-Christian sources in their letters and teaching, indicating that they had enough knowledge and understanding of their culture to be able to apply it to their teaching to help their audiences understand them.

Participating in the Work of God

Based on the few examples found in Genesis and the teaching of Jesus and the Apostle Paul, Christians should engage culture. But notice why Christians are called to engage culture.

In each of the scriptural examples listed above, there is a common reason for engaging culture: to participate in the work of God. And what is the work of God? The work of God is to renew all things — including people and the world. This means we engage culture to renew the world and win people to Christ.

Christians should — in fact, they must — engage culture. Christians can’t be faithful to the call and commands of Christ without engaging the culture around them.

And besides, a fish can’t avoid water.

The Secret to Prayer

If there’s one thing I want to be known as, it’s a man of prayer.

For years, I tried to discipline myself to pray. Prayer cards, prayer apps, prayer journals; I’ve experimented with (and discarded) all these methods.

My difficulty in cultivating a life of prayer confounded me since I’m disciplined in many areas of my life. I run or walk at the same time each morning, I read the Scriptures and take notes in the margins daily, I work a full-time job alongside a part-time job and teaching a weekly class at my church. But for all my discipline, I could not cultivate a praying life.

I am pleased to say that is changing. I am not pleased to say why.

Why I Haven’t Been a Man Who Prays

In his book A Praying Life, Paul E. Miller writes,

You don’t need self-discipline to pray continuously; you just need to be poor in spirit.

What does it mean to be “poor in spirit”? In three different prayers, the shepherd-boy turned king named David explains:

As for me, I am poor and needy,
but the Lord takes thought for me.
You are my help and my deliverer;
do not delay, O my God! (Psalm 40:17)

But I am poor and needy;
hasten to me, O God!
You are my help and my deliverer;
O Lord, do not delay! (Psalm 70:5)

For I am poor and needy,
and my heart is stricken within me. (Psalm 109:22)

After years of failing at prayer, I am realizing that my lack of prayer has nothing to do with my lack of discipline and has everything to do with my lack of neediness.

The truth is, I think I’m enough. I don’t think I need God to solve my problems. If I can’t figure out what to do with my life, I read some books. If I don’t know how to discipline my kids, I ask someone who seems to know how.

Where I turn when I’m in need reveals whom I truly believe in. Miller writes,

If you are not praying, then you are quietly confident that time, money, and talent are all you need in life.

He follows this statement by pointing out that if you live like time, money, and talent are all you need, “You’ll always be a little too tired, a little too busy.” And so I have been. For a long time. Like butter spread too thin, I have been covering just enough of my life to make it taste like I’m there.

Praying Because You Have to

But this is not how Jesus lived. If you look closely at Jesus’ life, you will find him on his knees in a desolate place before each major moment of his life, and as a matter of regular practice. Miller contrasts Jesus with the quietly self-confident person, saying,

But if, like Jesus, you realize you can’t do life on your own, then no matter how busy, no matter how tired you are, you will find the time to pray.

You see, Jesus and David prayed for the same reason: they needed to. They had to.

I didn’t pray because I thought I could do life on my own. I didn’t pray because I didn’t need to.

But now I do.

I’m not sure what exactly opened my eyes to how needy I am, but it must have been some combination of having four small children ages six and under and feeling the appropriate smallness of the impact I can have on the world and people around me.

I can’t make my children obey me. I can’t guarantee their safety. I can’t plan the next ten years. I can’t truly know what someone is thinking or feeling. I can’t control much of anything. Not really.

Learning to be Desperate

But I had to learn that desperation, like all of us. We are all born knowing we’re dependent on someone else for everything, then at some point, we grow up and think we’re self-reliant and self-sufficient. But sooner or later, life catches up in the form of a diagnosis or unemployment or a wayward child, and we realize all over again how helpless we truly are.

This realization doesn’t necessarily drive us to see our neediness, however. It can, and often does, begin a low period where we seek to control our circumstances until we can climb out of the pit we’re in. Sometimes we find our way out, sometimes we don’t.

But we would be better off to stay in the pit a bit longer and learn how desperate we truly are for outside help. This is one reason why God allows us to enter into prolonged periods of stress, pain, or anxiety. Miller reminds us that

Learned desperation is at the heart of a praying life.

When we learn how desperate we are for God, we draw near to him. When we learn that we’re constantly desperate for God, we stay near to him. In the same book, Miller writes,

The criteria for coming to Jesus is weariness. Come overwhelmed with life. Come with your wandering mind. Come messy.

A few weeks ago, I came to Jesus weary, overwhelmed, wandering–messy.

And then I started to pray. “A needy heart is a praying heart. Dependency is the heartbeat of prayer,” says Miller. He’s right.

The secret to prayer is not discipline or scheduling or recording prayer requests. The secret to prayer is needing it.

Now I come to Jesus and pray like I need him, because of course, I do.