There have been times in my life that I had no where to turn. Bills had to be paid, obligations needed fulfilled, and I didn’t have the resources to do so. It was in these moments that I learned a valuable truth, the end of the rope is not the time to begin to pray. It’s in the very beginning when the rope is handed to you that prayer needs to happen. It is through this conditioning that I have become equipped with confidence that regardless of the opportunity or decision I can trust that God hears my prayers. That isn’t enough though is it? To just be heard, we also need answers. It has become evident to me through speaking to people as well as in my own life that people have a tendency to pray without expectation of response. In our core there is this root of deception that speaks to our hearts saying that God has more important issues to handle than to hear the likes of us - there are people starving and wars that need to end, right? It is this small lie of a voice that causes many people to do one of two things:
Solicit a prayer to merely check a box - let's call these the "solicitors"
Give up even attempting to ask in prayer because they feel their energy is better spent elsewhere - let's call these the "do it yourselfers"
Both the "solicitor" and the "do it yourselfers" have one thing in common, they do not believe, or have not experienced, God's voice and therefore do not know prayer to be conversation but rather a means to send off verbal requests in an effort to cover their bases just incase it results in something helpful. Prayer is far more than carrier pigeons. God is highly communicative and deeply personal. He invented relationship and is prompt to respond when we speak to Him. I want to discuss with you the potential that is available through prayer. I have learned through intimate relationship with God how to hear Him answer when I pray and also how to have a conversation with Him. It is His supreme desire to have conversation with you about what is on your heart as well as what is on His regarding you. Therefore, it is of great importance that we train our ear and equip our minds with an expectation to hear.
Several years ago I began to ask the Lord to give me revelation on how to pray better. I did not know much about praying beyond, "Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name...", and honestly I wasn't fully confident that I even knew what that meant. I had become both the "solicitor" and the "do it yourselfer". Every now and again I would request something from the Lord or even thank Him when something went well but in all honesty I lived my life through a "I got saved and there isn't much more for me" theory, a sad way to live life if you ask me. Honestly, there was little to no fruit in my life either. I saw other people who seemed to thrive in life, they had fruit, they got answers. Two things that I desperately desired and had been spinning my wheels trying to accumulate without success. There was one commonality in these people's lives that became evident to me, prayer. I realized that in some way prayer was directly associated with results. Prayer=Fruit and actually from what I could attest, prayer=a better life - the one that I was spinning my wheels to gain. Clearly I was doing it wrong and I needed to learn what prayer truly was. My "solicitor, do it yourself" approach was only leaving me dead in the water and fruitless; it left me wanting. It was at that point of desperation I began to try something that in my life was brand new to me, I asked God to teach me to pray.
I remember how ridiculous I felt in that first moment. I prayed and asked God to teach me to pray and then simultaneously thought, "how is He going to teach you if you can't even hear Him speak?". I felt ill equipped and silly for trying. It felt as if asking for this qualified me for a mark of "lack of gratitude and discontentment" on my score card - as if there were such a thing. It is so important that we recognize that God speaks, but so does our insecurities and Satan. In this case my insecurities were readily responsive to my desire to approach this journey with God. However, God is gracious and He answered my prayer in a way that I was equipped to hear Him. I came across a video about listening and the importance of it in our relationships with people. In this teaching the teacher mentioned something that literally changed not only my prayer life but also my life in general. They said, "the way that you respond in conversation with people is direct evidence of how your prayer life and relationship with the Lord looks". Wow, this was absolutely novel to me. My first reaction was, "this is good news and bad news. On the one hand I am a great listener so my prayer life is already great, but on the other hand I am not receiving any answers so now what options does this leave me with?". So I reached out to God again, "Lord if this is true and the way that I act in conversation is a direct reflection of how I talk and communicate with you, will you show me what I look like in conversations with people?". Boy was I in for an awakening! I began to recall conversation after conversation with people that I had in the past and not only was I not listening, but I would interrupt them during their answers to tell them what I thought they were going to say. I had thought that in doing this I earned their confidence in my ability to understand them, but in truth I was now seeing that most people left from speaking with me feeling unheard and miss understood. I talked most of the time, interjected what I believed to be their thoughts, and left feeling confident that the conversation was complete. No wonder I was not hearing answers from God! If this is how I spoke to people than I needed my heart to be reconditioned with a desire to listen so that I was open to hear.
All this time I thought God wasn't answering when the truth of the matter was, I was not listening. I encourage you to take the bold and courageous move today to do what I did and ask God to show you what you look like in conversation with people. Then be intentional to repent and be open to adjust. It could be that you find that you receive a similar report as I did, or it may be that you are on the other side of the spectrum and you are not speaking at all. Regardless of which side you find yourself, it is an important evaluation. Both sides of the spectrum have a miss understanding of healthy communication and when brought to light hearing can start to take place. Conversations with you are paramount to God, you are His child and He wants to speak with you. Listening is a big part of hearing. It is in the hearing that answers come.
For more information on how to hear God's voice and grow in your ability to affectively pray, subscribe to this page and stay tuned. Much more on this topic is to come! I can say with confidence that God has truly answered my prayer, not only has He taught me how to pray effectively but also how to hear His voice. I want to help you step into a fruitful life filled with personal conversation with God your Creator. He has so much to say to you!
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