Do you ever feel like you’re banging your head against the wall when you pray and not getting anything back? Are there times when you wonder if your prayers are getting anywhere or if He is just simply quietly listening, contemplating His next move?
When I first got saved, I hated going into the prayer room. Everyone at our church had to take a prayer hour that they were responsible to be at every day. It was great training, but it was a hard point in my day.
I would go into the prayer room each day with dread because I didn’t know what to say for sixty minutes. I just didn’t have a request list that long. So I would end up repeating the same things over and over, and then after what seemed a sufficient amount of time, I would move on to the next request. It was as if I was supposed to follow some organized format of placing my request on the table and hoping that somehow God would notice it, stop by and maybe read it. Then maybe He would consider it, perhaps talk it over with some of the angels and see if it was any good, and then either answer it, reject it, or put it in the “Later” pile.
Sometimes I would sit there and wonder what all that stupid repetition sounded like to God. Here is the most intelligent entity of the universe suffering through this babble that sounded like it was directed to a moron. Did He every get tired of it? I sure would, and I wasn’t anywhere near as smart as God.
I just didn’t know how to pray.
I can’t tell you that some incredible light bulb went off and I finally saw the light. It didn’t and neither did I. There was no epiphany that all of a sudden changed my whole perspective. I think I just got tired of trying too hard.
It was when I finally surrendered, that it all came together for me. At that point, the door opened to real communion with God, and when it did, I was flooded with a world of possibility.
God doesn’t live on a one-way street. The traffic flows both ways with Him. If it doesn’t, then you might be banging on the wrong door.
You can get advice on how to pray from just about anywhere. Lots of well-meaning folks would love to tell you how it works. But that’s what works for them. It’s like telling someone to just have faith. How do you “just have faith”?
No, prayer – the deep kind that pierces the heavens and moves God – is a personal thing. It has to be real, not something that comes packaged in a book or some program to follow, otherwise you’d be flapping your wings, but never able to get off the ground.
Prayer has to be personal – just between you and God – it has to be real, and you have to want it bad enough to go get it yourself.
Brother Dale
Revivalfire Ministries