Prayer has ignited a struggle in me more often than a lot of issues. I knew it was important, but so many times it seemed like trying to force-feed myself when I am feeling sick. What is the point? Why should we pray? What good does it do? Am I doing it right? These were all questions that plagued me when it came to praying.
I don’t claim to have it all figured out at this point, but I do have some thoughts on the matter as God has brought a bit of revelation about talking with Him.
That’s what prayer is after all—a conversation with the One who knows you inside and out, who has chosen to love you and who has promised to never leave you. So, at least you know that no matter what you pray, He will listen.
I think we often think of prayer as a Christmas list we offer to God to ask Him to give us some things. Or a list of grievances we bring to Him, demanding like an angry toddler that He relent and change our circumstances.
As I’ve been asking God to help me understand prayer, He has shown me that it is so much more than a presentation of information or requests. There is a communion involved, a sharing of intimacy and conversation as I come to a place that pulls me above the circumstances to see a relationship that goes beyond. It is a safe place from which to view everything else, bringing a perspective shift and an empowering unlike any other.
Corrie ten Boom says, “The wonderful thing about praying is that you leave a world of not being able to do something, and enter God’s realm where everything is possible. He specializes in the impossible. Nothing is too great for His almighty power. Nothing is too small for His love.”
I think we want to know what the “something” is that He is going to do—make sure it checks out with what we wanted from Him. But there is something so beautiful in the surrender of our plans, dreams, desires into His care. We leave them all with Him as we pray--all the precious people for whom we care, all the worries about how He is going to bring His promises to fruition, and all the aching places of hurt for which we need His healing.
Nothing is impossible. But it may not happen in the way we thought, or in the time we thought. Or it may not happen at all—not because God is sleeping or didn’t hear us right, but because He sees the bigger picture and is working out something in us in the process. I don’t like the process of transformation very much sometimes. It requires pain and suffering that I don’t appreciate. But the goal is good, and I realize when I come to Him to lay it all out before Him, His goal is my good and He is loving me along the way.
Sometimes this communion with God is His allowing me to process through the frustration of my day to get to the place of praising Him, even if I don’t have resolution yet. Sometimes it is pouring out my desires for others—peace, freedom, hope. Sometimes it is simply crying “Jesus” because I can form no other words. Sometimes it is joy-ridden thanksgiving as I see His love pouring through me and over me.
What I want, though, more than anything in prayer is that communion, the connection that comes from sharing deeply and intimately with the One who turns His face to me and wants to hear everything. He knows it already! But He wants to hear it from me. He wants to shower me with belonging, with tenderness. He wants to remind me that He holds the future, and I can trust Him with all my worries. He wants to bring fresh revelation and resurrection life in the dry bones of so many areas of my life.
What does this require of me? Simply, come. Come to Him. He knows what I need before I even say it, but His desire is always for relationship. Prayer is fostering a relationship, tending to a beautiful intimacy that surpasses any human relationship I could muster. The responsibility is always at His feet, but He desires me! He wants me to recognize how near He is always. My hearts responds with a resounding, “Yes!”
Don’t be pulled in different directions or worried about a thing. Be saturated in prayer throughout each day, offering your faith-filled requests before God with overflowing gratitude. Tell him every detail of your life, 7then God’s wonderful peace that transcends human understanding, will guard your heart and mind through Jesus Christ. Philippians 4:6-7