Cedar Ridge Baptist Church Pastor Responds to Jen Psaki’s ‘Prayer is Not Freaking Enough’
Jen Psaki leaned into the lens. Her voice was calm, practiced, sterile. “Prayer is not freaking enough.”
BY RICH BITTERMAN
The words left her mouth and flew into the bloodstream of the internet. Screens lit up. Commentators stirred. Pastors clutched their pulpits. Some nodded. Others boiled.
In Minneapolis, a Catholic school shot up. Blood had already dried in the grain of the wood. The pews were full of silence now. Parents would bury their children by the end of the week.
And somewhere in the Missouri Ozarks, a pastor sat on the edge of his chair, gripping his Bible like it might run from him.
He had watched the clip three times. It wasn’t her tone that got him. It was how many people believed her. Prayer, they said, was just a way to look busy while doing nothing. A kind of emotional wallpaper.
He turned the page to Mark 11. The road from Bethany. The fig tree that Jesus cursed. It offends modern ears. Which is exactly the point. Why kill a tree for not bearing fruit when it wasn’t the season for figs?
But there it was. A tree full of leaves. Empty underneath. All promise, no yield. The next morning, it was dead from the roots.
Peter had been the first to speak: “Rabbi, look…the tree You cursed has withered.”
Jesus did not explain Himself. He turned and said, “Have faith in God.”
That was it. No parable this time. Just that.
The pastor closed the Bible. The line stayed in the room.
What if she’s right?
He hadn’t meant to think it. But the voice was there, low and sharp. What if Psaki was right? Not about prayer, but about us?
What if prayer had become what she said? A hollow ritual. A sound people make when they’ve run out of answers and don’t want to admit it.
He remembered his own prayers. The way he said them. How many had been cloaked in language that sounded safe. Careful. Empty.
The fig tree had leaves. So did he.
He dropped his head in prayer. No words at first. Just heat rising in his chest. He felt like a man trying to breathe underwater. He reached for honesty.
God, we say prayers because we don’t know how to believe them.
A line from 1 John rose in him: “If we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.” He had quoted it a hundred times. But now it felt heavier. Alive.
Prayer, when real, is not performance. It’s petition in the will of the living God. It moves the needle of history. But only when it comes with blood in it.
He thought of his own church. Just a little building tucked into the Ozark hills. Cedar Ridge Baptist. Some weeks, there were twenty in the pews. Some weeks, thirty-five. But what they lacked in numbers, they made up for in prayer.
They were a praying people.
Not the kind who just nod when someone shares a need. The kind who kneel. The kind who remember. The kind who write your name on a yellow notepad and wear the ink out with their tears.
He’d seen things happen there that would make the skeptics blush.
Just prayer. Quiet. Steady. Fierce.
The people in that church could tell you story after story about answered prayer. Not because they were special. But because they believed Jesus meant what He said.
“Whatever you ask in My name, I will do it.”
And they asked.
Prayer, when it aligns with the will of God, does not knock gently. It storms the gates.
He stood now in his room, now, still remembering the weight of answered prayer moments. How prayer, real prayer, had taken him by the throat and not let go.
He opened his Bible again, this time to John. Jesus’ words fell like hammer blows:
“Whatever you ask in My name, I will do it.”
“Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.”
This is access.
To pray in Jesus’ name is to speak with His authority. In the 1980s, a kid could ride his bike to the corner store with a crumpled note from his mom. The clerk didn’t question it. He saw the name, filled the bag, and sent the kid home. The power wasn’t in the paper. It was in who signed it.
But most of us pray like orphans. We toss up if-it’s-your-will prayers not out of reverence but because we’re hedging our bets. We doubt and disguise it as humility.
That’s the problem.
That’s why Psaki’s words rang true to so many. They’ve only seen church people say grace before meals and mutter platitudes after shootings.
We made this happen. We taught the world that prayer was polite. That it was passive. That it was a hashtag.
He looked out the window. Clouds stacked like stone over the Ozarks. Somewhere, kids were still bleeding. Parents still numb. A city still ringing from gunfire. And the church was silent.
The fig tree died because it looked alive and wasn’t. A curse for pretending.
We are being cursed for the same.
But Jesus didn’t stop at judgment. He turned to His disciples. Gave them power. Told them that prayer, real prayer, could cast a mountain into the sea.
He meant pray like you carry My authority.
Pray like I gave you the right to speak heaven’s will into the dust of this world.
Pray like you believe I’m listening.
He picked up his phone. Watched the clip again. The studio was still too bright. But the words didn’t sting this time.
Prayer is not enough?
She’s right.
Not if it’s just something we say.
But if it’s the voice of God echoing through a believer who knows His will?
Then it is more than enough.
It is war.
And it is already won.
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I’m Pastor Rich Bitterman, a country preacher from the Ozarks. Guy Howard, the old Walking Preacher, once wore out his boots traveling from church to church, meeting strangers and sharing the gospel. I’m doing the same today on digital roads. Each post is a visit. Each verse is a step. Let’s walk the Word together.
