My sister-in-law is a rather amazing volleyball coach, but she wouldn’t tell you that.  In her four years as head volleyball coach at a local high school she has lost something like two regular season conference games.  She also gets the coolest name in volleyball, “Coach Kill”.  (For all you non-volleyball people, a “kill” is a successful spike during a game.)

Coach Kill is a very determined.  I can’t tell you all of her coaching secrets because that would diminish  the awesomeness of the Killingsworth family name. But I can tell you one thing she constantly tells her players: “DON’T PRAY!”

Ok, let me explain.  It’s common knowledge that to hit a volleyball a player will cup their hand together and extend their forearms to hit the ball.  The thing that drives my sister-in-law crazy is some players cup their hands together under their chin or near their chest before extending their arms to hit the ball.  This position looks like the player has their hands together in prayer.  The reason its bad is because it wastes time in hitting the ball.  It’s an unnecessary step.  It would be like the batter in baseball twirling the bat while the pitch is on its way.  Or the quarterback kissing the football before he threw it.

Basically, Coach Kill wants her players to spend their time and energy on hitting the ball and not on an extra step that simply takes more time and sometimes causes the player to incorrectly hit the ball or worse, miss the ball all together.

Sometimes that’s what we do.  We see an issue or a situation coming at us and we say, “Let me pray about it.”  Prayer ISN”T bad.  However, sometimes we “pray” when it’s already completely obvious what God thinks about the situation.

Our pastor asks us to help with a certain task.  We say, “Let me pray about it.”  That’s Christian-ese for, “Really, I am more important to me than whatever you are asking me to do, but I need to sound spiritual right now, so I am going to use this to buy some time until I can find a better excuse to not help you.”

James, in the Bible, had a similar issue in his day. James 2 “¹⁵ Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. ¹⁶ If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? ” (NIV)  Hey buddy, I am praying for you!

We should pray continually.  In fact, we should pray so much, that when a situation comes up we quickly know what we should do.  A  lot of opportunity is wasted on “prayer”.  We need to pray, not “pray”.

What about you?  What do you need to stop praying about?