by James Pate

Created on: May 30, 2008

Even after I committed myself to God in my sophomore year of high school, I experienced times of spiritual disorientation. At various points along the way, I was bored with the Bible, since I assumed that I knew it all. After all, I was aware of a lot of the stories, and the doctrines of penal substitution and justification by grace through faith alone were familiar to me. Plus, I knew that Christians are supposed to love God and their fellow human beings. So why did I have to read these things over and over? In my mind, I already had Christianity figured out. And yet, at the same time, I had a deep spiritual hunger that was not being satisfied. I wanted to feel good from the things of God, and it wasn't always happening. I often had a dead, bored feeling inside.

During high school and my first year at DePauw, my prayer life was rather sporadic. Sure, there were times when I prayed, but I didn't do it every single day. Maybe I'd pray because I had a test that was coming up, or I wanted God to protect me from being picked on at school, or I asked God to make a special girl notice me. Don't get me wrong, my prayers were not always "gimmee, gimmee, gimmee," for I did pray to God about his nature and goodness. I didn't know exactly how to do that, though-in a way that made me feel filled. In my high school years, it took the form of "I know that this is true about you, and I know that is true about you." My phraseology struck me as corny, so I was often reluctant to praise God for his nature.

During my first year at DePauw, I had good times with God. For many Sabbaths, I would go to DePauw's library at its opening time, read a Spurgeon sermon, and walk around the vacant second floor praying to God. But, again, I did not pray every single day. Plus, there were still times when Christianity made me feel empty or unfulfilled, since I thought that I knew it all.

My second year at DePauw was when I started praying every single day. At the beginning of the school year, I was reading Ellen G. White's Desire of Ages, a biography of Christ. She said that Christ could identify with me because he was once a human like I am, so I should feel free to approach him and share my deepest emotions. And so I did that. And it must have helped somewhat, since I continued to pray every single morning. But, still, I wanted to learn more and find inspiration, and, for some reason, the Bible and Christian books were not cutting it for me.

My prayers in those days had a number of components.

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