One of the neat things about being in ministry is the opportunity to hang out with other people in ministry. Every month, pastors of various gospel-centered churches in the Baltimore area get together to pray, and last Wednesday I attended one of these meetings.

Some of these pastors were pretty young, but others had decades and decades of experience. Either way, I was the only one who wasn’t a pastor, and I was a bit nervous to say the least. I felt a little bit like a Padawan walking into a Jedi Council.

At the end, we were going around in a circle praying, and as I was waiting my turn, I was trying to gauge the environment in the room. Some of the pastors would pray in a bit of a crescendo, and in these sorts of prayers, usually around two-thirds of the way through, there is a climax of “Amens.” Others offered more of the minimalist no-nonsense right-to-the-point prayers. During this time, I was trying to come up with impressive things to say, things that made me sound confident but humble, knowledgeable but not too intellectual, passionate but not too fiery, theologically sound but not too preachy.

My turn came and went, and I spent much of the rest of the prayer evaluating how my prayer “performance” was. I didn’t get as many “Amens” as some of the other pastors had gotten. It wasn’t long before we said “Amen” altogether.

Later, a bunch of us went to get lunch together, and it was a really good time just hanging out with the pastors. We were talking about everything from 9/11 to football. But perhaps the one line I will always remember is when I overheard one of the younger pastors asking one of the older pastors, “Guys, I just need to confess something. Tell me if I’m alone in this. Whenever you’re in these large prayer meetings, do you ever just zone out and imagine a nice Luigi’s sandwich?”

I remembered this scene so clearly because I remember realizing how different this pastor’s heart was compared to mine. I had been so busy trying to impress everybody, while this man was humbly and even humorously confessing his inadequacies. Jesus’ story in Luke 18:9-14 comes to mind. There are two men praying at the temple, a Pharisee and a tax collector. The Pharisee prays a prayer of thanksgiving, loud and proud, and the tax collector merely begs God for mercy. Jesus says about the tax collector, “I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

And that cut straight to the heart. Here we were lifting up the city of Baltimore in prayer, and I was primarily concerned with impressing others. I was using God to fulfill my own purposes, in the same way church leaders during the Crusades used God to fulfill their own purposes.

I was talking to Pastor Dan about this whole situation today, and he told me that dwelling in the gospel frees us from comparing ourselves with others. Not only do we lose the right to look down on others, but we also lose the right to look up to others (at least in an idolizing sense). We can’t feel like we’re better than anybody else, because we are who we are because of the grace of God. And we don’t need to feel like we’re walking into Jedi Councils, because these men are who they are because of the grace of God.

The grace of God flattens the playing field like nothing else. It democratizes God’s “anointing.” And that has dramatic implications for us. Impressing others is no longer meaningful. Jealousy has no place. Our identity is secure.

And we can have genuine performance-free prayers.

Larry