Can you pray? Honestly, I am in a season in my life where I don’t think I can. Oddly enough it’s rather hard for me to open up my heart and voice and kneel at The Father’s feet to pray no matter the reason. It’s embarrassing to say but when I begin to pray I get tongue-tied and that lately has been my reality.
I have a small problem praying because a part of me feels guilty for asking anything from God at this point and sometimes I even feel silly doing it. I’ve reached a point in my Christian life where I no longer worry or fret about anything, I know that God will provide. I have done the dance of not trusting Him and being at His feet begging for help and crying for solution. In result I ended up feeling like a bigger fool when He provided victory over the situation because I should have known that’s how it would work out in the first place.
Instead of praying for myself, my family, our finances and sustainability, our health, and whatever desires exist in our heart, I instead have more room to pray about filling our home with the Holy Spirit everyday as well as praying for other people which has been an absolutely amazing transformation. Now that I have reached this point in my Christianity, I reflect back and say wow was I ever selfish. There is so much need in the world- sickness surrounds us, terrorism borders us, and oppression exists in every corner of the world.
When we take ourselves out of the equation of prayer and choose to fully trust God with our lives, it’s amazing to see what happens to your heart. I see the world in a different light now, I have a more hurt heart for those who don’t know Christ, and it’s just shaped my own faith as well as my family’s.
My pastor at church said it perfectly the other day; he said something along the lines of “I can’t pray for you as well as you can pray for yourself”. I agree with him in everyway and on the opposite side of my prayer issues, I have always had a hard time asking for prayer because in a forum setting, you don’t know what details to provide and leave out, and all because you fear the judgment you may receive. When I struggle to the point of feeling consumed by a problem, I will seek out prayer from my church family confidently. However, I still will reach a point where I feel foolish because my trust should have been stronger.
So here I am in this place of my journey where I feel closer to God than ever before. I can officially do the one thing I never could before which is trust Him without losing faith or hope. When a situation arises to me in my life, I no longer see it as stressful or impossible. Instead I look to the Heavens, thank the Lord up above for the blessings I have and continue marching on through life knowing that either way there will be victory on the other side of my worldly issues.
Since growing up in faith and developing this attitude, my days have certainly gotten brighter. Stress leads to more mess and now I no longer struggle with it as much. I can now enjoy the life God has blessed me with and simply just remain thankful to Him.