I am still thinking about prayer; how we pray, why I find it hard, at times, to pray. I really long for an ongoing, rich and vital, conversation with God. And I don’t think that’s presumptuous; it seems to me that the Scriptures make it clear that God intends to have conversations with us. So, I continue to think about prayer and how it happens . . . and what gets in the way of a good conversation with God.

Although narrative passages of Scripture don’t necessarily give us direct instructions on “how to,” when I watch people interact with God, I can often catch glimpses of what is helpful, and what is not. With that in mind, I was looking at some early accounts of prayer. One that clearly warrants some thought is the exchange God had with Cain that is found in Genesis 4.

Cain killed Abel; although the Genesis passage doesn’t explicitly tell us why, there are hints in the passage of Cain’s jealousy of his brother. In any case, murder was the outcome.

And then God comes to talk with Cain. Repeatedly, God initiates some exchange. After Abel has been killed, God asks Abel: “Where is Abel your brother?” (Genesis 4:9)

Well, God is not asking Cain this question because he doesn’t know; in the next verse God makes it clear that he knows that Abel is dead and that Cain was responsible. So, God’s intent in asking Cain this question was not about getting needed information.

And Cain pushed back; he resisted God’s inquiry. Cain responded: “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?”

Cain’s response, although conversation with God, was hardly healthy praying. Cain lied and Cain deflected God’s question. He lied in saying he did not know where Abel was. He deflected God’s pursuit by ignoring the basic question and suggesting God was going after something else.

God knew that Cain knew what had happened to Abel. And God wasn’t interested in assigning Cain the task of being his “brother’s keeper.” God was asking so that Cain would be honest with where his head and heart were at that moment.

I beleive that is often a bigger part of prayer than I tend to think. I often approach praying as if it is about informing God. I feel that I have to tell him stuff, subtly acting like he needs me to inform him. I tell him about what is going on; I tell him what is or is not happening; and I advise God about what he should do about the situation. And I can often deflect God’s nudges, refusing to look at the things he is stirring in my heart whether through promptings of the Spirit or through what he is showing me in his Word. I end up having “Cain prayer” with God.

But what is often missing in that kind of praying is what God seems to be pursuing in his exchange with Cain.

In Genesis 4:6 God asks Cain questions, not to get information that he didn’t have, but to draw Cain to think better about how he was doing life. In Genesis 4:9 God asks Cain a question, not to get information that he didn’t have, but to invite Cain to expose what was really going on in his soul.

Prayer, in these instances, is not about informing God, but about exposing oneself to him. Prayer is an adventure in self-disclosure and not simply the act of reporting facts to the Almighty.

I think I miss that, often. I spend so much of my time in prayer merely reporting facts to God. I act as if what is most important is for me to bring God up to speed on what is going on. When, all along, what he really is trying to do is to gently nudge me to expose my heart, my soul, my aches, my anguish, my personal “stuff” so that he can meet me there.

I am not sure what would have happened with Cain had he answered more candidly when God asked him questions. But I have a suspicion that Cain’s journey with God would have been very much different had these early moments of prayer moved from informing God toward exposing his own soul.

I wonder what would happen if my praying changed. What if I began to talk with God as if it were about so much more than simply informing him? What if I really began to talk with him about what was going on, on the inside?