Imagine a young man who pledges himself not to marry, or even to speak to a woman about anything of consequence, until he has studied women thoroughly and can claim to understand them. Imagine, too, that he sets the rule for himself that he will accept nothing that anyone else has ever had to say about women or marriage until he has proved it for himself. Such a man, unless he abandons his quest for perfect knowledge, will likely never become a husband. But if he does marry, pity the poor woman who is married to a man convinced that he knows everything about women and marriage. Prayer is much more like falling in love than it is like diagramming a sentence or solving a geometric equation.
True love is a way of acting.
It is the dedication of one's entire person to the welfare, honor, and praise of another person, in every way that such a person is lovable, and in the case of fallen human beings, despite everything that is unlovable. We can still love our enemies for what God intends them to be, against all the evidence, even as our Lord loves us, despite ourselves and contrary to what we deserve, even unto the death of the Cross. Jesus Christ loves us on the cross, sacrificing his body and his blood, giving up his rightful dignity as the eternal Son of God, with his whole heart, with his whole soul, and with his whole mind. He worships his Father from the cross in this complete and total way, providing us with the perfect picture of both love and worship at the same time. To love or to pray properly, then, we must have the perfect example of Jesus Christ on the cross before us, and we have to recognize that the cross comes before Easter.