Prayer has been one of the greatest challenges of my Christian life. While I know I am commanded, encouraged, invited and often compelled to pray, I have still struggled with prayer. My struggle has centered primarily on three areas.
First, I have struggled with concentration. Why is it that as soon as I bow my head to pray, my thoughts start to scatter…and I literally mean scatter? Instead of truly communicating with God, I think about meals I need to prepare, work documents that are still half done, people I need to call back, emails that need to be responded to . Or I’m so tired that I simply doze in the quietness of the hour. This last one does not bother me much though, after a class I sat in a few years ago where we learned about the “napsio divina” concept which encouraged us to get okay with falling asleep in God’s presence.
And I have struggled with content — just knowing what to say and how to say it. He is God, knows everything…what does one say to someone like that? And honestly, sometimes I feel like I am just repeating the same things over and over.
As I have sought victory in these three areas, I have asked God to give me solutions. And He has! Setting my alarm for an earlier time, allowing me to meet with the Lord before I begin my day, has helped with consistency. Writing down my prayers has helped not only with content but also with concentration.
The Apostle Paul prayed for the Ephesian followers of Jesus, and I pray these words for us as we seek to draw closer to God:
“For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge — that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:14-19).
The purpose of prayer is not just to get answers. The purpose of prayer is to develop an intimate, personal relationship with the One who loves you, gave Himself for you and longs for you to live in the light of His presence. And it while it may not come easy for some of us, achieving the purpose makes the struggle more than worthwhile.
Belinda K 