Spirituality and Public Prayers
Growing up in church and as a preacher's kid I have always known that other Christians will judge you and your level of spirituality by your prayer life, specifically your public prayers because that is what they can see. This is an area where most Aspies like me struggle a lot. We don't do well in social situations and public prayer is very closely related to public speaking. This was one of the things that made me feel like I was spiritually lacking because I felt like everyone expected me, as a former preacher's kid, to have this area all figured out and I never felt comfortable with praying out loud so I felt like it was a spiritual problem that I couldn't seem to overcome, and I didn't know why or how to overcome it. Some people may be great at public speaking, and we are very thankful for them, but some of us really struggle in that area. Speech class in college was one that I endured because I had to, and I just barely passed it both semesters of my freshman year. I never ever want to have to go thru that ever again.
Sometimes when Christians mention that they have trouble praying in public, people will act like it should never be an issue and that they should just pray to God like they would if no one else was around. The problem is that some of us don't pray out loud when we are alone and if we do sometimes pray out loud, it isn't big, long prayers. It can one or two simple short sentences that we know that God hears and understands. The rest of the time our prayers are in our heads and hearts and sometimes words don't even formulate in those prayers. God can read our minds and He knows what we are thinking without the need for words. We can communicate with Him and tell Him what is on our hearts without the use of words because He doesn't need them in order to know and understand us. He uses words to speak to us, but He doesn't need words to hear us. He is bigger and better than all of that and there is explanation of that in the Bible that most people seem to overlook. "Romans 8:28 Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered."
God tells us to "Pray without ceasing" and that is just what some of us do. We talk to God thru out our days and we know that He is always there when we need Him. We don't need a big, long prayer session with big words and lots of details in our prayers. We have little moments thru out the day and we know that He is always there and understands us without us having to find the words. God is the only mind reader, because even the Devil and the other angels don't have that ability. Because of this, our conversations with God are more private and intimate than our conversations with anyone else because even the angels don't know what we are telling God in our wordless prayers.
Some of us Aspies really struggle with mid-week prayer services at church solely because of the expectations of the public prayers. We don't mind praying for other people, we just struggle with the social expectations and spirituality judgements of those around us when we have to do it out loud. We like being in groups with people who pray long prayers and sometimes lose track of the time, because that leaves less time for us to have to think of what to say to fill the prayer time. We feel a huge sense of relief when the timer goes off or the piano starts playing again before it is our turn to pray out loud. We don't often mention this to other people because they will judge us and think that we are not spiritual because we don't want to pray. In reality, we pray to God all the time, we just don't feel comfortable doing it out loud because of all the other social things that go along with it.
