Staying Committed to Prayer
The reality of life here on earth is that it is not immune to hardship.
The Bible is full of God’s promises. In John 16:33 Jesus speaks and says “in this world you will have trouble.” Another translation says “here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows.” It is not the feel-good promise we are used to, but it’s still a promise. This life was not designed for us to never face hardship.
But it is in the suffering where we grow. It is in the seasons of being tested that challenge our faith. You can either be in a storm right now, coming out of one, or about to enter one. At some point, you will be face to face with hardship. Walking through that hardship is where your faith has the unique opportunity to become even stronger.
There will be seasons where God may allow us to struggle beyond what we feel we can handle or solve on our own. His desire is to strip us of ourselves. To reveal His truth and His goodness to us. To prove that we aren’t here to silently suffer alone. To show us what is possible when we surrender to His will.
People often miss the opportunity for the growth that pain provides. God wants us to discover the hope that is in Him when it feels like hopelessness is consuming us.
You can walk through painful seasons with God, or you can walk through painful seasons without God. Either way, when you are faced with hardship, you are given the opportunity to choose how you will carry that pain.
In our darkest hour, we chose to commit to letting God in.
To letting God heal the parts of us we thought would never be healed.
To letting God bring restoration not only to our family, but to the families He has brought to us who are also suffering.
Committing your life to Jesus starts with your commitment to prayer. Praying in the seasons where you can see God moving, but especially praying in the seasons where you can’t.
When you receive salvation, you are agreeing to a commitment with God. You are entering into a relationship with Him. A relationship that involves you continuing to participate, because His participation never ceases.
Praying to God only on Sunday mornings at church is not enough. Imagine a relationship you’re in right now, whether that’s a relationship with a spouse, a friend, a sibling. Imagine if you only spoke once a week. Think about what the quality of that relationship would be. Probably very surface level. There wouldn’t be any intimacy. It would be difficult to feel important, to feel valued, to feel cherished, or to feel loved.
The same is true in regards to our relationship with our heavenly Father.
Praying doesn’t have to sound any certain way. It doesn’t even have to make sense. Praying means that you are communicating to God. It means that you are showing up. It means that you are holding up your end of the relationship. It means that you value the commitment you made.
In Luke 11:1 Jesus was away praying and one of his disciples came to him and asked, “Lord, teach us to pray.” There is evidence that even Jesus himself valued prayer and stayed committed.
The disciples weren’t interested in learning how to preach, they just wanted to learn how to pray.
God doesn’t need you to preform, but He does need you to participate.
Your prayers have permission to be a mess. They can include anger and doubt. They can include questions and desires. You never have to have it all together to cry out to your Father. The good news is that God is always there, ready and able. You just need to show up.
Your focus affects what you experience. When we lay all of our hardships out on the table in prayer, instead of trying to hide them from God, we get to experience supernatural comfort. Prayer will get you through the roughest seasons in life because it shifts your focus from the problem to the Problem Solver.
God is more interested in hearing your messy prayers versus the pretty ones. He wants the ones that are not scripted. He wants the prayers that overflow with tears and not just those words you want others to hear. He wants your prayers that show the real condition of your heart, while still declaring that you trust in His will.
One of the biggest things the enemy can target is your prayer life. He knows that if he can get you to a place where you feel unworthy, unloved, too sinful, that it will make you flee from God. He knows if he can bring you to a place of such hopelessness that you’ll feel like your prayers don’t matter, so what’s the point of praying if God isn’t listening?
It doesn’t matter what you’re battling. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done or what you’re going through. Your circumstance doesn’t change the truth that is in God’s promises. God hasn’t changed. He will never change.
God doesn’t hide from the difficult sides of you, He runs to those parts the fastest.
We don’t pray because of who we are, we pray because of who He is.
Whether you have a lot to bring to the table, or just a little, when we put it into the hands of a big God, He can do far more than we could ever ask, think, or imagine.