If you’re anything like me, you’ve spent much of your life wondering whether prayer “works” and why we Christians are encouraged to pray when God Almighty is omniscient and knows everything before it happens anyway.

How many times have we heard of people leaving the faith because God didn’t answer their prayer for a loved one to be healed, or because He didn’t miraculously intervene in some circumstance?

Our understanding of prayer is all wrong, my friends, and it has led us to feel abandoned by God.

It might be best to take several steps backward and re-examine who we believe God is.

Do I believe that God is present in my life or is He some distant deity looking down from lofty heavens?
Do I believe that God cares for me or is He rather like the selfish pagan gods who only desired mindless worship?
Do I truly believe that God hears me or do I secretly think He is asleep or out of cell range and unable to hear my desperate cries?

If you’ve grown up in the church, you know all the “right” responses to these questions.

“Of course, God is present in my life! Haven’t you read that God will “never leave you or forsake you”?” (Hebrews 13:5)
“Of course, God cares for me as He cares for the sparrows and flowers in the field!” (Matthew 6:25-34)
“Of course, God hears my cries, just like He heard David’s cries for help!” (Psalm 20:1-5)

Let’s be real here. I know the Bible. I know what it says about God. But what I know in my head and what I truly believe to be true in my heart are often two very different things.

Prayer is not an intellectual exercise. In the words of David Benner, “Prayer is not simply words that we offer when we speak to God but an opening of our self to God.” (Opening to God)

Prayer is all about opening our very self - our hearts, minds, and souls - to God. Think of opening like an open hand willingly giving to another, as opposed to a closed fist that holds its possessions tightly. That’s what opening to God means.

You can’t open yourself up to God if you don’t fully trust Him.

So before you endeavour to “improve your prayer life,” you need to examine whether you truly trust God with everything that you are.

Do you trust Him to take care of you if everything else in your life - your family, possessions, job, intellect, and passions - were taken away?
Do you trust Him to provide what is absolutely best for you, even at the cost of what you hold most closely?
Do you trust that He sees your deepest, darkest self and He loves you wildly, passionately, and tenderly in the darkness?

These are hard questions, my friends. They are not for the faint of heart.

And yet, this is where prayer starts. As you begin the arduous journey of peeling back the layers of yourself and your relationship with God, you are entering into prayer.

One of the most profound books I have read on prayer is David G. Benner’s Opening to God. I’ve listed a few quotes from the book and have linked the book below in the recommended reading list.

Where God always will be and where God wants to meet us is in the midst of the realities of our life and experience.
Prayer is the encounter of the true self and the true God.
- David G. Benner, Opening to God

Prayer is not some ritual that Christians participate in to climb the spiritual ranks and become “more holy.” It is not making wishes from a genie in a bottle, as if we could command the God of Creation to do anything. Prayer is simply being in the presence of God.

This is good news, my friend! God is present in your current reality. You need not travel far and wide to access His presence. He is closer than your very breath. He is with you at this very moment and longs for you to simply be with Him.

Prayer is more than you could ever imagine, because God is so much more than you could ever conceive.
- David G. Benner, Opening to God

In what ways do we limit God? When we confine God to our ten-minute morning prayer time, we fail to experience what God is up to in the rest of our lives. Prayer requires an ongoing openness to what God is up to in your everyday, ordinary life. It requires paying attention - to others, to the world, and to ourselves. If we believe God to be present in all of life, then we need to pay attention to every present moment.

Openness to God is simply a response to the hunger God places in your heart.
- David G. Benner, Opening to God

Prayer is a response to God. It is something that God initiates and invites us into, and we have the privilege - and responsibility! - to respond. There are many, many ways in which we might respond to God in prayer:

Worded prayers: this is the type of prayer that we are most familiar with and may include both spontaneous and liturgical prayers
Creative prayers: any artistic expression can be a response to God in prayer (for example, woodworking, painting, writing, dancing, music, or homemaking)
Prayers of service: helping others in love embodies Jesus’ words in Matthew 25:35-36:
“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”

There is no “proper” way to pray. Prayer is consenting to God’s initiative in your life, not imposing your will on God. It is giving up control and willingly opening all of yourself in faithful trust in God’s goodness.

This requires patience and willingness to enter into the silent, dark places of your being because that is where God is found. His immeasurable love is there, wrapping up the core of yourself in His ever-loving arms.

Prayer is not shooting out some phrase or desperate plea to a God “out there.” Prayer is surrendering to the God who already lives within you. It is the path to a deeper relationship with God.

Be courageous, my friends, and you will encounter God as you never have before.

In courage and in love,

Katelyn

Why Do We Pray Anyway?

Our understanding of prayer is all wrong, my friends, and it has led us to feel abandoned by God.

You can’t open yourself up to God if you don’t fully trust Him.

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