Devotional: Prayer Life
This past week, I did a study over prayer life and how to be a woman of God through our prayer life. It's so crazy to think that prayer can play such an incredibly important role in our Christian walk, but it does. We are blessed to have a connection to God in prayer, and it makes it all that more important. This direct line with God is not meant to be taken for granted, or to be ignored.
The first question for my study came when I thought about some of the women of the bible and the way they approached God compared to what we do today. It's changed quite a bit, honestly, even if we don't realize it.
What do you consider prayer life to consist of? It's actually more of a loaded question than one might think of. We can say quiet time, reading the Bible before prayer, just talking to God, and many other things.
If you take a look at 1 Samuel 1, we see the example of Hannah praying desperately to God. She is pleading for a son, even though God has closed up her womb.
Her prayer directly asking God to remember her and to give her a son stood out to me. She wasn't shy, she didn't beat around the bush, and she definitely didn't say "well, this is what I want, but...". Hannah was crying out in anguish to God and pleaded with Him directly to give her what she desired. What an inspiring woman she was.
It begs the question of why we don't follow her example? Why are we not as direct with God today as they were back then? Hannah wasn't the only one who asked God for something specific. It happens all throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament. But nowadays (I know I'm certainly guilty of this) we don't take the opportunity we have as Christians to be bold and direct with God.
As my friend, Abigail, and I studied this, she said something that really stuck with me. She said we aren't direct because we're selfish. I completely agree with her. There are always reasons we won't go to God directly.
We shy away from our prayers at times and it makes our prayer life weaker. God did not give us the Holy Spirit to make us timid worshipers. He gave us the Holy Spirit to empower us to be bold. And if the Holy Spirit speaks on our behalf: "We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through worldless groans," Romans 8:26. If we have this Spirit who, as Paul says, intercedes for us in order to connect us to God, why are we so bashful in our prayers?
God has stayed the same throughout the ages. He answered direct prayers back then, and I can guarantee He will do the same now. It makes me wonder what has changed over the thousands of years that we are so hesitant to be direct with God. Yes, He is sovereign and all-knowing, and He knows what the outcome will be. But God also knows what is on our hearts already. He knows everything, but still desires to talk with us through prayer. If we hold back because we're shy, scared, or any other reason, it's a missed opportunity to talk with our Creator. And I'm ashamed to say I've avoided these talks simply because I didn't want to say what was in my heart out loud. It makes us selfish doing this.
Another part of prayer life is how we pray. Of course, we can look at Matthew 6:5-15. Jesus himself set out an order of how we should pray and what prayer should look like. We should:
-Give praise to God
-Ask for His will (not ours) to be fulfilled
-Ask for what we need and what we desire (we can be direct!)
-Ask forgiveness for others AND for ourselves
-Pray we live in victory over sin
While we can look at a list and say, "Oh I've hit all these today. I'm good.", we can also easily overlook some of the most critical parts of prayer. Humans are naturally selfish beings who think highly of ourselves. It's part of the sin nature we were born with. How often do we find ourselves praying, and we forget to praise God? We skip straight to asking what we want and what we think we need. Isn't it selfish not to give praise to the Creator of everything before we focus in on ourselves? Yet we do it all the time.
Also (one that really stomped my toes) is the forgiveness part. Sure, we ask for forgiveness of others, or that we can forgive them. But do we, on a daily basis, ask God to forgive us? Of all the people we should be worried about forgiving us, it's God. We sin every single day, yet go weeks without asking God to forgive our sins. Yikes. Now how highly do we think of ourselves that we feel we don't need to ask for forgiveness?
God is the only perfect being in this universe. Jesus was the only perfect man on earth. While we are supposed to live like Him, we are not Him. We aren't perfect or anything of the sort. All of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23), so we need His forgiveness on a daily basis. Yet we try to justify our sins, saying "Oh this one wasn't really bad" or "No one really saw this so it doesn't count". They all count. They are all just as bad in the eyes of God. We all desperately need His forgiveness. And the amazing thing? He grants it to us!! All we have to do is repent of our sins. That doesn't mean you can do it over and over again, but repenting seriously and trying to live a holy life afterwards. God knows we'll fall short, but that's why He had Jesus take our place on the cross. He gave us mercy and grace.
Now yes, we can be direct with God, and we need to be mindful of how we pray to God. But do you sometimes feel like when you pray, you feel like you're talking at God instead of to Him? Sometimes we just don't feel connected, or we feel like He isn't listening. I promise you, He is listening. But why do we feel like He's not?
Let me pose this question then: have you ever considered that part of prayer is having God talk to you?
Yes, God still talks to us. His voice can be hard to hear, but if you listen, you can hear Him. This goes back again to humans being selfish. We have almost conditioned ourselves not to hear God nowadays because we're too "busy" to sit and stop to listen. Ecclesiastes 5:1-2 talks about approaching God, and it literally says not to be quick with your mouth. Don't be hasty, and let our words be few.
Basically it's saying to stop talking and stand still in the presence of God. If we can stop focusing on ourselves for just five minutes a day, how much more of God would we hear in a week? In a month? We have stopped hearing God because we don't want to hear Him anymore. He'll have answers we don't want, or He answers in a different time than you want. So we fill in the blanks of our quietness and keep going, too impatient to wait on God.
How often have we skipped out on a conversation with God because we feel like we don't have enough time for Him? Doesn't that make us cringe, saying we have no time for the person who literally brought everything into existence? Again, yikes.
Others might say they don't think God will talk to them, or He doesn't talk to us in this day and age. If we agree from earlier that God has remained the same back then as He is now, would that not also mean that He who communicated with His people back then would not do the same for us now? It's a bit contradictory to say. Why would He not talk to us now? Maybe it's not as direct as some people heard Him back in the day, but I guarantee God still talks to us and has conversations with us. There are different ways He talks to us, but just because it's a different method doesn't mean He's stopped talking to us completely. The main reason we feel like He's stopped talking is because - again - we have stopped listening.
If we actually stopped, sat still, and truly went into prayer desiring to hear God's voice, do you not think we would get a reply? It may not be in the way you expect (it most likely won't), but God will answer. He will talk. But knowing how to listen is the first step in knowing how to talk to God.
Prayer life is so incredibly crucial in our walk with God, but is something we often take too lightly. When we pray, remember who we're praying to. Don't shy away from Him. Don't be selfish either.
Be bold. Be direct. Know how to pray. Ask for His forgiveness. And be quiet. Listen to what He has to say to you. That may be the most important part of prayer. It's a two-way conversation, and I believe it's time I start treating prayer like that again.
If you have any thoughts or comments about this devotional, feel free to let me know! Thank you for reading!