I Am a Praying Person
Religious leaders are predictably more religious than any other leadership group. Ninety-five percent say they frequently engage in prayer. Scientists are the least religious group. Twenty-seven percent of them say they frequently engage in prayer.
Connecticut Mutual Life Report1
In the Navajo Indian language, the word most often used for prayer is a synonym for "holy person." For the Navajo, prayer cannot be understood apart from a person praying.2 Prayer is a person acting to recreate the original oneness of God and man.
One of the keys to establishing a consistent Christian prayer life is to become a praying person—and to see yourself as a praying person. Prayer is not a religious act divorced from an actor. It cannot be compartmentalized. It must be part of a person's self-perception. Until then, prayer will always be a dreary duty rather than a self-identifying action.
Sometimes this is a slowly developing awareness. Sometimes it happens almost overnight—like it did for Jerry Cook, a Foursquare pastor from the Pacific Northwest:
"I had a heart attack last year and spent a good deal of time in intensive care. One night I was hanging on the edge of life, and looking back, I find it fascinating the things that were of no comfort to me as I was bumping into death.
"My accomplishments, for example. Pastor of a big church, author of books, world traveler—all the things that had made up the activity of my life before the attack. They didn't give me peace. I didn't consider them unimportant; I just didn't identify them as eternally important when eternity was staring me in the face.
"That surprised me because I remember thinking that being pastor of this good work for God, this church, faded in importance when compared with my Savior ...
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