How to Pray when You're Numb
How spiritual numbness may mean you're ready for more in your spiritual life.
A healthy relationship with God, just like any healthy relationship that you have, is experienced with different forms of communication. But usually when we are praying, what are we doing? We're usually asking for things. Asking for this, asking for that, asking for forgiveness, asking for God's will to be done, asking for wisdom and grace, asking for God's presence to be near… all very good things that we should be doing. But relationships that are only experienced in one direction… where only one person is doing the talking, maybe especially if that talking is exclusively asking for things… lack of certain kind of depth. It's not the kind of depth that you would expect in your closest relationships. We expect and need more from our closest relationships, and our relationships with God also need more.
I recently took my church through a sermon series called How to Pray When where we looked at different life situations that called for different forms of prayer. The one life situation most people seemed to identify with was spiritual numbness. What is spiritual numbness? I’ve heard it described as spiritual fatigue… maybe spiritual overstimulation… maybe spiritual “meh”. Apathy, perhaps. Being stuck. Can’t get to the next gear and maybe you care about getting there and maybe you don’t. Disenchantment. Don’t know what’s next, spiritually speaking. Not “feeling it” like you used to when you were in high school or college or when you first came to know Jesus. It’s sort of a spectrum of emotions and spiritual well-being, but if you know it… you know it. Numbness. It’s relative and unique to the individual. And finding any guidance on it in scripture is hard to come by. References to it in the Bible are as nuanced as the experience itself… which only sort of amplifies the problem for those who experience it. To address it, I used the story of Martha and Mary. Mary is sitting and listening to Jesus, Martha is doing other things while Jesus is in the room. We all know the story. We usually us preachers use this story to dog on Martha for not spending enough time with Jesus, but I’m more sympathetic to her. Let me explain.
Imagine if someone you admire walked in to church on Sunday. Someone you really admire… someone who has gravitas. In days of old we would have said, “If the president walked into the room”, but that example has lost it’s luster lately. For me it would be if Eugene Peterson walked into service… or Tim Duncan (go Spurs!). I would have a hard time doing normal things if that happened. I’d have a hard time paying attention to congregants, getting the coffee made, or even giving a sermon. I’d be a little beside myself. Think of who are those kind of people for you. People who enchant you, capture your imagination, who make you worried you’ll say something dumb, who would make it hard to pay attention to anything else, who take away your ability to do other normal things. Not to pull the classic Jesus-juke on you… but it’s fair to wonder if Jesus is one of those people for you. How do you react when you’re in the presence of Jesus? When you sing in worship, take communion, when you pray, when others pray for you, when you or someone you know experience God’s love and goodness in some kind of way… what do you notice yourself doing when that happens? Your answer may give some insight into whether or not you may be experiencing spiritual numbness to some degree. Here’s how you know… spiritual numbness is having the ability to do other things when Jesus walks into the room. Whether it manifests as overstimulation, fatigue, apathy, being stuck and whether or not you care to get unstuck… when Jesus walks in, what do you find yourself doing? Are you unable to do other things, or are other things all that make much sense to do? If you’re able to do other things, do you ever ask yourself, “Is this as good as it gets?” Is this how far Christianity is going to take me? Seen it all, heard it all, know it all. Maybe you’ve been a Christian for a long while, served on this or that committee, you’ve donated to this and helped set up that, going to small group is a chore… you’ve been interested in apologetics in the past but not anymore, you got like 1/64th through your 1 year Bible reading plan, the worship song that helped you through something doesn’t hit like it used to, reading church history makes it feel even worse, Jesus just isn’t enchanting anymore and you’re not sure what’s left to discover. Is this as good as it gets? This is spiritual numbness. Other things just become easier and easier to do when Jesus walks into a room.
I have a different view of spiritual numbness than maybe some other pastors do. When a congregant tells me this is how they feel, I don’t respond with worry. I actually have a silent excitement for them. I’m not excited for their suffering, but I am excited that they’ve come to the end of a road. And here’s why… numbness may be an indication that you’re ready for something more in your spiritual life. When you’ve heard it all, seen it all, and know it all… when the spiritual food has grown bland… you may be ready for what the New Testament describes 3 times as moving from milk to solid food. Many of us think we moved on from milk long ago, but that phase of our spiritual lives lis meant to last longer than we may realize. We are children a lot longer than we think we are… just like every child wants to include “and a half” when they tell you their age so they feel older than they are, we do the same thing in our spiritual lives. We want to think we’re older than we are. Moving from adolescence to adulthood, moving onto a different diet of spiritual practices and Christian living, when one road comes to an end and a new one begins, it’s not always an easy or smooth transition. Numbness to what you know can be a sign that you’re ready for richer food… and like any child being weaned from milk… who thinks milk is as good as it gets… we don’t always know what’s available. We need help to discover more… so that when Jesus walks into the room again, we find ourselves at his feet again rather than doing other things.
I was at the end of the road, mostly in the first couple years of seminary. All the buildings I built came tumbling down and I had very little to hold onto theologically… it was hard to preach down at Cottonwood Church of Christ east of Abilene because I didn’t know if I believed what I was saying or not… I saw how much of the sausage was made with the Bible, theology, different Christian movements… I changed my theological foundations and atonement commitments… I learned that translating Greek and Hebrew is actually really hard and that it’s much more of an art than a science… I had been serving in church for about 13 years… the phrase “God is love” was the only thing I was really even sure about… when asking for things was the only way I really knew how to pray… when I was numb… I discovered, through the help of others, the practice of contemplative prayer.
Contemplation. What is contemplative prayer… well, to put it in very simple terms, it is the “other side of the prayer street”. If asking for things is moving in one direction, contemplation is moving the opposite direction. If asking for things is always talking, contemplation is always listening. It’s a different kind of skill. My son is 3 (and a half) years old. He loves to talk… and because of his age and where he is in life, listening is a skill he is developing. We aren’t really born with the skill to listen, it’s something we develop as we get older. We have to tell him to “tun on his listening ears”, and he reaches up and physically switches them on… he has to practice it. It isn’t quite natural for him yet. Our prayer lives are the exact same way… we are naturally good at talking… constantly asking… but there comes a point in our Christian maturity where we start to practice turning our listening ears on. That is contemplative prayer. If you have run out of things to say due to spiritual numbness, it may be time to not say anything at all and turn your listening ears on. Contemplative prayer is how we pray when we are numb because contemplative prayer is how we hear the answer to the question, “is this as good as it gets?” It’s a step off the familiar road that just ended and onto the uncharted, mysterious, and vastly rewarding road in front of you. St John of the Cross said about contemplative prayer some 500 years ago… he said, “There is no map, there is only surrender.” Go down the new road.
Sit down… take a breath… or a few… acknowledge Jesus who has come into your house… and when your attention is stolen, don’t judge your thoughts or judge yourself… just gently bring your attention back to Jesus in front of you and listen. You may be surprised how often God speaks.
Martin Laird, one of the more helpful voices in this space, tells us in his book Into the Silent Land that there is no goal of contemplative prayer. He says, “You’ll come to realize that the Christian contemplative journey is not a journey to get something. Instead, what you will find it’s a journey that is unfolding of who you really are.” You were made to know your God, you were made to love your God, and you were made to hear your God. You were made to commune with God… it’s who you are. Is this as good as it gets? No! You may not even have scratched the surface of your faith yet. I promise that you have not come up against the walls at the end of Christianity, what you’re feeling is probably a door… and as Jesus says, in his Father’s house there are many rooms… we just have to open them. You were made to live in and explore your Father’s house, not just stay in your room til you die. How can you start? You can start by turning your listening ears on.
How do we pray when we’re numb? We listen.