As a seminary student and Christian I feel like this is the hardest thing for me to admit…
I really struggle with prayer.
Let me clarify: I love prayer. Some of my most spirit-filled moments have been when I was praying. I believe that God speaks to us through prayer and that prayer is crucial to living a faithful life.
But prayer is not instinctive for me. It is normally an after thought or when I have nowhere else to turn.
I have been deeply convicted about this and have been exploring why this is true for me. I have tried to collect my thoughts nice and neatly (which is a struggle for me)….
1. I am scared.
What if God actually does do something awesome in my life? What if I can’t live up to what God is calling me to? My self-doubt has made it easy for me to ignore what God is calling me to.
2. I have already answered the call.
I already made a leap of faith. I felt God calling me to be a pastor and I answered that call. I am already in seminary. God couldn’t be calling me to anything else. One call is enough for one person’s life…right?
3. I can do this on my own.
I believe in free will, so God has already provided me with the means to fix things…right?
Typing these things makes me laugh and also makes me recognize how often I actually think these things.
In reality, I believe that God calls us all to great things. It could be to love those around us or to sell everything and become a full time missionary. No matter what it is God calls us all to something greater than ourselves; we are all called daily to love God and to share Christ with others. I also believe that we were never created to live our lives independently of one another or of God. We were created to be in communion with one another. We were created to depend on one another and on God…
….And here is the root of my struggle with prayer.
I struggle to truly depend on God and trust in God’s provision.
We talk about this a lot in the church. We talk about trusting in God. Depending on God. “God will provide.” How many times have we heard that.
And I believe in God’s provision, but I think we struggle to actually articulate it.
I think we struggle to articulate this because depending on God and trusting in God cannot happen without faith. We talk about dependence independently from our faith, when in reality they are deeply connected. You cannot have one without the other.
When I explore this, I think “duh.” Everything is dependent on faith. My belief in God is dependent on faith.
But I don’t always see clearly, and my life is not a straight path. I find myself on the dry path with weeds and thorns more often than not.
I struggle with prayer because I easily forget that it all comes back to faith. We think that faith is implicit in all conversations about God. But we are humans. I am a human. I am broken. I am easily distracted.
I must be reminded daily that it is by faith that I have been saved. It is by faith that I serve God. It is by faith that I can trust and believe in God’s provision.
Scripture and prayer are two of the ways that I am reminded of this. My fears get in the way of me turning to these things first, but my faith in God is what keeps me running the race.
I believe that Jesus Christ is my savior and that God loves me. And every once in a while I need to be re-grounded in my faith. I need to seek first Christ and then I see a little more clearly. Instead of giving up on my struggle with prayer I keep on struggling. I try each day to depend on God a little more. I try each day to be led by my faith. I try each day to continue on in the race.
