How Starbucks Almost Ruined My Prayer Life
About 10 years ago I was struggling with staying in a pattern of daily time with Jesus and, though I loved His Word, staying in it habitually had become a bit of a challenge for me. That’s when someone introduced me to the Life Journal. Pastor Wayne Corderio assembled a tool that kept me, and many of my friends, in the Scriptures every day. For me, it worked better than any plan in which I had ever engaged.
One of the greatest things about Life Journaling was that I could gather a group of folks to spend time digging into God’s Word together. Two or three times a week I would meet at Starbucks and pour over passages of the Bible with others, listening together for what the Holy Spirit was saying to us. It was good times. I still often practice that delightful discipline with people, and it is consistently one of my favorite times of the week.
However, there has been a dark side to this. Like I said, most of my daily reading and reflection was done at Starbucks and done with others. I got used to the company, the crowd, the noise, the smells, and of course, the coffee. All of that became an integral part of what my personal time with Jesus looked like every day.
But I started missing something: The time crying out on my face before the Lord, or singing at the top of my lungs while hacking away on my guitar, or sitting before God in a chair in the silence of my office. These things didn’t happen as much…until eventually they rarely happened at all. I slowly but certainly became spiritually one-dimensional.
I shouldn’t be OK with limiting the bulk of my time with Jesus to Starbucks or Life Journaling any more than I would be content to restrict my relationship with my wife primarily to the breakfast table. The reality of any deep relationship requires dynamics: Intimate moments, fun excursions, gatherings with many friends as well as quiet one-on-one connections.
Furthermore, I think we miss out on some important spiritual needs when we get so one-dimensional. Intercession, meditation, reflection, personal worship, spiritual warfare—these are all things that can be challenging to practice in a coffee shop.
So over the last season I’ve been rebuilding my relational dynamics with God. I haven’t given up my Life Journal, my gathering and digging in with others, and definitely not my Starbucks. But I am remembering to add back the truly private time…time where my knees and face find the floor and where my voice finds it’s full strength.
For while devotions in a café and prayer in a church service are great, all of us still need time with the Father behind closed doors where nobody else is around (Matthew 6:6).