I've grown up always knowing who Jesus was. Ever since I can remember our weeks revolved around what was going on at the church, bible studies, revivals on the weekends, etc. So why is it that I still struggle with such an integral aspect of my faith: prayer. I even get incredibly embarrassed that I struggle so badly with it. Ask me to pray over a friend going through a difficult time, I'm good. I can do that. Same for praying in front of a crowd before a service starts or before dinner. Those are topics. I can always take a topic & talk...that's never been an issue.
But prayer is way more than that. Prayer is about being transparent. In fact, it's about completely taking away even the transparency & opening your heart completely [something I've never been able to do]. It's about admitting the ugly & accepting the consequences. It's about finally being real with what eats at you & tears aways at your soul. And it's about having open communication & dialogue with the Creator of the universe, the one true God.
I struggle with doing this regularly. I use busyness as an excuse. I get lazy. And even worse, I pray about it once, flippantly, and use that as reason to not bring it up again. And as terrible as that sounds, it's not so I can just check it off my "I prayed for this" list, it's because I don't want to continue "bothering" God with it.
It's like I don't even know the God I pray to.
He never tires of hearing our voices or requests. We are told to "continue steadfastly in prayer" (Col. 4:2). We must never grow weary in being open & bringing repeated needs to Him.
Even though this is most definitely a struggle of mine, there's yet another that I still grapple with. One that I can't seem to find a balance for. It's praying for what I actually want. Doesn't sound too difficult right? But it is my biggest struggle in my prayer life. Asking God to supply my needs is one thing, but to ask an omnipotent, sovereign king to give me what I want just seems almost disrespectful. I'll start laying out my prayers before Him & catch myself as I start being open about certain aspects of my life. I find myself stopping & instead saying "Thy will be done". Now, I know there is nothing wrong with this & it sounds like I'm not making any sense, but I think I've almost hindered myself from being completely open & broken before my God. I try & ignore the desires of my heart & the things I want because (and this is totally the Calvinist in me) I know He is in control & what He wills to happen will happen, no matter what my wants & desires are. And I know I truly want His will to be done in my life. I know without a shadow of a doubt that His ways are always better than mine. My issue is not one of what's going to happen in my life, but it's an issue of thinking my transparency is too petty for Him to hear. I literally put a road block on that aspect of my life; letting myself not really be honest or make excuses for what I feel, & try to push it away.
There are things in my life that I really do want to happen. For instance, (and I can't believe I'm saying this, but we're giving this transparency thing a try, right?) I can't think of anything I want more than to be a wife & a mother. And my reasons for wanting them are not even your typical ones. In a marriage, I want to experience a relationship that completely reflects Christ & His love for the Church. I want to see that played out in a human relationship for myself. And for kids, I want to adopt. I want to experience yet another beautiful example of what Christ does for us when we are called into His family. I want to give someone a second chance, or a chance they never had to begin with. I want all this to play out in my life to reflect Christ & to experience more fully what He does for us. Now, I want this a little down the road of course (or whenever the Lord wills it) but this is the biggest thing I struggle with bringing before God. Because what if it isn't in the cards or His plan for my life? I hate praying for that as my future if it might not happen. I feel like me asking for it makes me sound like I know what's better for me more than He does.
I, above all else, just want His will for my life. But I must also learn to be more open with a God who gave me these desires. He knows my heart because He created it. And He knows how much I over think everything because He made me that way.
I should never be ashamed of that.
Here's to me trying to let down just one of the many walls I have up. A little transparency.
But the temporary pain of the demolition is worth it because He makes beautiful things out of the dust.
"This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us- whatever we ask- we know that we have what we asked of him." 1 John 5:14-15
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