glenna marshall

Prayer for the Wandering Mind

I longed to be a faithful “prayer” for many years.

My grandmothers were both known for their thriving prayer lives, but I discovered that sadly, faithful praying is not a genetic trait you can inherit. It’s learned and practiced. Essentially, I wanted to be like them without actually being like them and putting in the effort to become a faithful prayer. I talked to my one living grandmother recently, and she assured me before hanging up that she prays for me every single day. She always has. And I know she always will. See, that’s the thing. When she says she prays for me, I know she means it. That’s what I want.

Several years ago, I realized that I could admire my grandmothers, read all the books on prayer, and talk about it endlessly with others, but the only thing that would help me to be more faithful in prayer was to actually pray. Sometimes it’s more enjoyable to talk about how we’re going to change or grow or embark on something new than it is to actually do the thing we claim we want to. Prayer was a thing I really enjoyed talking about but seldom did with any intentionality beyond quick emergency prayers.

It took years to develop a regular, intentional, meaningful prayer life, and even now, I still have days where I struggle to stay focused in prayer. The trouble, I’ve discovered, is that I am plagued with a mind that wanders. I know I’m not alone in this.

Do you ever find yourself confessing your sins to the Lord or praying for someone and then mentally adding things to your grocery list? It’s so frustrating to realize that in my conversation with the Lord, I’m suddenly deciding if I should buy fresh green beans or canned. Sometimes the wandering is more meaningful than grocery lists. Perhaps I’m praying for someone and I trail off for five minutes wondering how they’re doing and when we last talked and whether or not they’ve been to church lately. I can spend two minutes praying and then ten following a random thread of thought that winds itself through my day, my kids’ backpacks, my husband’s evening schedule, the church membership roll, and my pantry. Maintaining concentration in prayer can be difficult to do, and it’s awkward to admit that we have trouble focusing when talking to the Lord. We want to stay focused, but how do we do it?

journal and coffee cup

I’ve been thinking on this issue for a while and have collected some tips and ideas that have helped me. When I find myself praying earnestly one minute and worrying over my son’s math grade the next, I know that I need to take some steps to capture those wandering thoughts.

  • Pray with a list. This is, hands down, the most helpful tool I’ve used in maintaining a growing prayer life. It helps me to keep my promise to pray for others, stay focused, and keep the habit of prayer on a more regular basis. I add to my list regularly and cross things off when I can, but usually, I reformat my list twice a year and tape it to the inside cover of my Bible. Starting with my own personal sanctification, I pray in a concentric circle, so to speak, working my way from my immediate family to my pastors and church family, biological family, unsaved friends and family, missionaries and church planters, and the persecuted (global) church. When I can’t sleep at night, I often go straight to my prayer list. I’ve used it so often that I can work through it without looking at it. Organizing my requests before the Lord means that I have a plan for prayer—and with a plan, I’m more likely to pray.
  • Keep a notepad or day planner next to you when you pray. When you remember something you need to do or a person you need to contact, jot it down quickly and mentally leave it there for later. Return to prayer immediately knowing that you don’t have to return to that thought because you’ve made a note to get to it later in the day. I use my day planner for this. It also helps me remember to contact church members or friends after I’ve prayed for them. (HT: Chase Snyder for this helpful idea.)
  • Pray through your wandering thoughts. If you can’t keep your thoughts from going to a task or a person or a problem, take the Lord to that task, person, or problem and pray through it. Talk to Him about why you’re stuck on this issue and how you need His help in it. And then entrust it to Him. Move on to the next point in your prayer list knowing you’ve covered this and can let it go for the moment. (HT: Dannah Gresh for sharing this idea on the Revive our Hearts podcast episode: The Art of Scripture Meditation.)
  • Create some mental white space in your day so that prayer time doesn’t become your only screen-free, work-free time of the day for mental meandering. The problem we have as 21st century Christians is that many of us live life chained to half a dozen devices that are designed to make life easier but that actually rob us of any time to simply think. Therefore, when we get still and quiet to pray, we find our brains firing in every direction simply because we haven’t had any “just thinking” time. Rather than giving your time of prayer with God to all those firing neurons, plan some moments during the day when you purposefully do nothing but think. It’s crazy, right? Doing nothing but thinking. It seems wasteful, but it might keep your mind from hopping on a random train of thought while you pray.
  • Still having trouble capturing those thoughts? Just pray anyway. The Lord knows your weaknesses. He knows we are but dust. Ask Him for help! He will always meet us when we draw near to Him even if we do so sloppily. Do it anyway. The more you pray, the more you’ll pray.

My grandmothers both knew that prayer, while difficult at times, was worth the sacrifice of time and effort to confess their sins, know the Lord more intimately, and intercede for others. I’m certain they’ve had days when prayer felt fruitless. I’m sure they had times of prayer when they just couldn’t pin down their thoughts. But the solution isn’t to quit praying. The solution is to remember what a gift, a calling, a miracle, it is that we can pray. And to keep at it. Jesus made it possible at the cross for us to draw near with a pure heart to God the Father. So let’s draw near, even if we draw near and back and around the corner and near again. Just draw near. Every day. You might feel it’s time wasted, but I guarantee that with regular practice and intentionality, your prayer life will grow and become a cherished part of your day.

Jesus made it possible at the cross for us to draw near with a pure heart to God the Father. So let’s draw near, even if we draw near and back and around the corner and near again. Share on X

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The More You’ll Pray

The first time I went with my friend to her chemo infusion, I couldn’t stop looking at all the people. So much suffering in one building where everyone lines up for the poison that both cures and kills. A lot of bare heads, a lot of face masks, a lot of stubborn, steady hope that this is the answer.

As summer moved to fall and then to winter, I learned the drill of going to chemo with Sue. I cherished our time to sit and talk while medical hope dripped through her veins. In the lonely days that followed her weeks of treatments, I prayed a lot for her healing and for the Lord to sustain her soul in the isolation that comes from a compromised immune system.

When my friend’s white counts began to drop to critical rates, I learned to pray as I never have before. I set a timer on my phone to alert me to pray every hour on the hour. I shared my practice with our church and before I knew it, an army of women were praying around the clock for our dear friend, Sue. Each week, we waited with bated breath for lab reports. When the miraculous increase stunned the doctors, we rejoiced and committed to pray even more. When the counts sank lower than they’d ever been, we wept and buckled down and prayed harder. When the bad cells didn’t decrease after the last infusion, we worried and prayed.

No matter the results, we prayed more and more and more.
The more we prayed, the more we prayed.

One morning last month, I was praying for Sue with a good deal of frustration. Her counts had been at critically low level for weeks and all I could say to the Lord was, “Why don’t You raise her counts?” and “I’m discouraged that You are not responding in the way we want.” But I knew that all I could do for Sue was to continue interceding for her. It’s all any of us can do. And yet, it’s so much more than “all we can do.” Prayer is more than a last-ditch effort. Prayer is war and hope and connection and faithfulness and pleading and sacrifice and confidence.

Prayer is more than a last-ditch effort. Prayer is war and hope and connection and faithfulness and pleading and sacrifice and confidence. Share on X

Slowly, daily, hourly this praying work has effected some kind change in my heart. Though I’m often discouraged when the Lord doesn’t respond how I hoped, I take a step back and try to see the situation with bigger eyes. The Lord is wise, kind, good, and faithful. And if He hasn’t seen fit to raise my friend’s counts, He has purpose in it. I don’t know what He is doing in her suffering, but I know He is using it to teach me to pray with hope, faith, and with a broader sense of what His purposes might be. He keeps me coming back to Him over and over. It’s weird. The more I pray, the more I seem to pray. 

On one of those days when I felt tired of asking the Lord to do something He didn’t seem to be doing, He helped me see the miracle I’d missed. During a terrible flu season, He’d sustained Sue with virtually zero immune system. All this time I’d been praying for Him to restore her immunity, complaining to Him when He didn’t. And all this time, He’d been keeping her well when everyone I knew (my family included) had been battling viruses, fevers, colds, flu—illnesses that Sue could not fight had not the Lord hemmed her in.

When I realized His hand had been at work all this time, I took His quiet rebuke with gratefulness. Sometimes I am the you of little faith Jesus addresses so often in the gospels. I’m glad for this correction. It’s not an indictment. It’s a rebuke with hope on the other end. We can always grow in our faith. It’s a hard, slow growth, but it’s growth the Lord is pleased to cultivate. And I think He does this through prayer.

Laboring in prayer is definitely a labor. It’s hard and sometimes feels fruitless. But the labor isn’t fruitless. Prayer is the means by which God chooses to work out His good purposes. Prayer helps me see just how little my faith can be and just how big our God is. Prayer keeps me coming back to Him over and over and over. Praying for others peels back the layers of my dimmed vision and see a little clearer that the Lord is both sovereign and good. Prayer helps me to have confidence in that sovereign goodness when circumstances seem unchanged. Prayer knits me together with others who are praying as I am. The more we pray, the more we seem to pray.

Every Sunday morning, one of our pastors prays for Sue during corporate worship. Every Tuesday morning, our family prayer time at church dedicates some time to pray for her. One of my other church friends told me the other day that a co-worker complained about how often my friend’s phone dinged with an alarm sound throughout the day. Cornered, my friend confessed that she prayed every hour for our friend Sue. The co-worker was surprised and said that she now knew who to go to when she needed prayer. The same church friend’s young daughter recently brought her mom’s phone to her from another room and said, “Mama, I heard your alarm and prayed for Mrs. Sue since you didn’t have your phone with you.”

I don’t know what God is doing in my friend’s suffering, but I know He is doing this: He is teaching Sue’s church to pray. He is teaching young children to pray. He is teaching co-workers that believers pray. And He is changing us.

Last week, Sue received the call we’ve barely dared to hope for. Her bad cells dropped at a miraculous rate and she is preparing for a transplant. We don’t know what the future holds for Sue, but we know that God loves her. And no matter how He has ordered her days, disease will not have the final say over those days. He will. And He has an army of believers who will pray for His good purposes to be accomplished in her life. The more we pray, the more we pray.

When I get down and desperate in intercession, I go to Scripture to remember what a gift this is. In Hebrews 10, believers are encouraged to draw near to God because at the cross, Jesus bought us access to the Father. We can approach God boldly with our requests because Jesus made it possible. When you feel like you can’t keep praying for someone, be encouraged that as you labor in prayer, the Lord is working when you cannot see it. When we draw near to Him in prayer, there’s a glorious side effect: we learn to keep drawing near. We long for it.

In paying for our sins at the cross, Jesus gave us an incredible gift: access to a God who beckons us to come to Him with our requests. So, go to Him with your requests. Go to Him when you’re burdened, when you feel like you’re always the one with little faith, when you are tired of praying. He doesn’t always work as we think He should, but the good news is that He is wise and good and He is at work. Our suffering isn’t wasted, and neither are our prayers. And the more you pray, the more you’ll pray.

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*I’d love for you to join us in praying for my dear friend over the next two months as well as her daughter who is her donor.

*Recommended reading on prayer:

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How Paul Taught Our Children to Pray

“Family worship” is a term we use a bit loosely for the dinner table devotions we enjoy as a family each night. My husband usually reads some Scripture, one of the kids prays for a neighbor or someone from church, and we all sing the Doxology together. The highlight for my two boys is to compete in levels of silliness, especially when it comes to singing. There are many corrections, plenty of spills and messes, and lots of laughter. Next to the table, we keep a coffee mug full of popsicle sticks labeled with names of our friends and church members, and there’s usually an argument over whose turn it is to select a popsicle stick for prayer.

mug of popsicle sticks

Our boys are learning to pray, and sometimes it’s hard not to chuckle at what comes out of their mouths when it’s their turn to address the Almighty. One child starts all of his prayers in the middle of a sentence without any greeting or “thank you,” while the other child focuses exclusively on supplication for going outside to play or hopefulness that dinner will taste more like French fries and less like Brussel sprouts.

When we ask our kids what they think people need to have prayed over them, we get a lot of comments about health, material needs, and happiness. Though we do acknowledge and pray for pressing needs in those areas, we want to teach our children to pray for what people need the most. As we’ve worked through how and what to pray with our boys, we’ve landed on a very simple request that can apply to any person we commit to pray for. It’s simple enough that our kids can remember it, but it cuts to the heart issue in that we can pray it for both our saved and unsaved family, friends, and neighbors. Lord, may they treasure Christ the most, follow him faithfully, and know they are loved by him.

Our simple prayer is based on Paul’s prayer for the church in Ephesians 3. Paul prays that the believers in Ephesus would be “strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:16-19). We’ve found that using Paul’s prayer, we can teach our children to pray for what people need more than anything else in life.

For Believers

For the names on the popsicle sticks that love and follow Christ already, we are essentially praying that those believers continue in faithful Christ-following. Praying for believers to “treasure Christ the most” means praying that the pull and allures of the world will not gain traction in their lives, that Christ will be more glorious and satisfying to them than anything else that life has to offer. In order for them to see him this way, we believe that Christians need regular exposure to the Word of God to reorient them to his character. So, in praying for them to treasure Christ more than anything, we’re praying that they would seek him regularly in his Word. As we pray for them to “follow Jesus faithfully,” we’re praying that the profession of faith they’ve made in Christ will touch every facet of their lives and that the world will know they belong to Christ. And in praying for them to “know they are loved by God,” we are praying for confidence in God’s approval and love for them that is rooted in Christ’s work at the cross. Paul calls that being “filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:19). When my husband and I pray, we flesh out these branches of the main prayer, but our children are learning what it means to treasure Christ, follow him, and know they’re loved by him.

For Unbelievers

For the names on the popsicle sticks that do not know Christ, we pray the same thing but with a different lens. “Lord, may they treasure Christ the most.” Here we pray that God would open their eyes to see their need for a Savior, and that they would believe the gospel of Jesus. If they have not been made alive in Christ already, then this is their greatest need. While we are concerned for health or financial issues, of course, our main concern is their spiritual state before God. When we pray for unbelieving friends to “follow him faithfully,” we’re still praying for their salvation. We’re praying that they would come to saving faith in Christ that profoundly changes the way they live their life. We’re praying that Jesus would become everything to them. And when we pray for them to “know they are loved by him,” we are praying they see God’s kindness and love in sending Christ to save people from their sins. We are praying they understand that God has showed us what real love is in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (see Rom. 5:8).

Dinnertime devotions continue to be a loud, messy affair in our house. When guests come for dinner, they are welcomed into our somewhat unorthodox family worship time. But I believe that in between the spaghetti splatters and the off-key singing, God is doing good work. His Word applies to our simple family prayers for the people we love. We don’t have to completely dumb down or oversimplify important facets of Christ-following just because our children are children. We can teach them to pray like Paul, to proclaim the gospel like Peter, to wrestle with discipleship like John, to sing like David.

We don’t have to oversimplify important facets of Christ-following. We can teach our children to pray like Paul, to proclaim the gospel like Peter, to wrestle with discipleship like John, to sing like David. Share on X

The prayers we pray around our dining room table can and should be rooted in Scripture, giving our children the language of faith and hope and love that they need as they themselves learn what it means to treasure Jesus the most, to follow him faithfully, and to know they are loved by God. They recognize the words because we pray them over each boy before bed every night. Sure, we still pray for hurt feelings, upset tummies, and scary storms. We pray for financial provision, physical healing, and math tests. We pray when there are bad dreams at midnight, big assignments due at school the next day, or doctor’s appointments. We encourage prayers from the heart. But we’ve found great confidence in using the language God has given us in Scripture to pray for what we all need the most: saving faith in Christ, perseverance in the faith, and certainty of God’s love for us.

 

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Author’s Note: an adaptation of this post was published first at Women Encouraged.

More, Not Less

The heat of summer in our little corner of the world has turned everything stale. The trees are beginning to turn, but I think that’s more from heat than from the coming of fall. 

My husband and I often take our kids to ride on a local bike path on the edge of town. Several small bridges take the bike trail over a large ditch that collects run-off from area farmland. (Technically, it’s a stream, but it’s called St. John’s Ditch.) Each time we’ve biked the trail this summer, we’ve noticed the ditch water has been stagnant with a scummy layer of algae across the top. My four-year-old comments on the nastiness of the murky, green water each time we see it. Can anything good be underneath? 

Lately, my heart has felt a bit like scummy, stagnant ditch water.  

My spiritual disciplines have felt like duty rather than a delight, and there’s nothing good coming from my heart or my mouth. Apathy has worn down my affections for the Lord. I find myself wanting to medicate my spiritual lethargy with sleep or entertainment or things to look forward to—anything other than what I really need. More created things, less of the Creator. Though I’m always tempted to answer my spiritual needs with physical things, I know deep down that my soul needs nourishment that only comes from the Word and prayer. 

When I feel disinterested in the things of God, when my time reading my Bible seems wasted, when everything in me resists turning my face toward the Lord, I know I must resist my resistance. I must follow the path of spiritual disciplines to joy. The Lord has given us what we need to draw near to Him.  

ditch in field

This morning I opened my Bible to the passage in Revelation that my study group will be discussing next week. I stared at the blank notebook page on the table, wondering if I really had it in me to fill the lines with words. My phone called out to me for respite, my bed for rest, the TV for entertainment. 

What good is it to study the Bible or pray if my heart is not really in it?

But that’s a temptation the enemy would love for me to run after. The truth is that my flesh will always desire to turn to physical remedies: sleep, Netflix binges, food, drink, me-time, pampering—worldly, physical versions of self-care. But none of those things will tip up my chin to look to Christ. At best these remedies encourage navel-gazing; at worst they briefly turn my face toward something that can never satisfy the way Jesus does. I can’t meet my spiritual needs with physical remedies. And if I wait to seek Him until I feel like it, I may never turn my face toward Christ. 

We might be tempted to think that a weary, spiritually dry season calls for a relaxation of the disciplines that keep us looking at Jesus, but I am finding that this is when I must be all the more vigilant. Not praying less, but more. Not opening my Bible less often, but more often. Not just attending church when it’s convenient, but especially when it’s not. This is not the time to back off! We fight spiritual stagnancy with more of Jesus, not less. Less only leads to a dangerous drifting away. 

Don Carson gives us this sobering word: 

“People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.”1

We fight spiritual stagnancy with more of Jesus, not less. Share on X

Fight to Drift in the Right Direction 

When I want to take a break from prayer and Scripture intake or when church is the last place I want to be—these are the times to lean harder into these practices. Because they are aren’t just practices. They are paths to spiritual growth, even when your heart feels like a stagnant ditch with a thick layer of scum across the surface.  

The words of the Lord can cut through stagnant waters, stirring our affections with truth and reminders of His good character. Because Scripture is the inspired Word of God, it has the power to awaken our hearts, to pierce our souls, to convict, to rebuke, to remind, to restore. The commands and precepts of Scripture are “no empty word for you, but your very life,” Moses said (Deut. 32:47).  

Praying when we don’t feel like it can turn our eyes away from our feelings of apathy and towards Him as we praise Him from an obedient heart and intercede for others. Where we’re facing matters in a season of spiritual stagnancy. Continual rumination of our despondency can make things worse, but dwelling on God’s character and praying for the needs of others can lift our gaze away from ourselves. Prayer reminds us we are dependent upon God for growth and affection for Him. Prayer keeps us near His side. 

Engaging in church community when we feel like we’re faking it is not hypocritical. It’s curative. Surrounding yourself with believers can help you remember the joy of your salvation, can remind you what it is you believe, can help to burn off the fog of spiritual staleness. If sitting in the pew feels like work, know that it is obedience, and that Jesus calls this kind of obedience love (John 14:15; 15:10). When life is hard, don’t back off from the body of Christ, but hold on more tightly, not less, as we wait for the coming of the Lord (see Heb. 10:25). The church can pray for you and hold you accountable in seasons like this. Sometimes it’s my weekly study with friends from church that keeps me in my Bible more than anything else.  

More, Not Less 

How do we do engage in these practices more when we couldn’t feel less motivated to do so? Paul tells us: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God” (Col. 3:16). Filling up our days with the Word is the route we take to persevere through fallow fields to a rich cultivation of gratitude. 

I’ve found it helpful to think like the psalmist and meditate on the Word morning and night (Ps. 1:2). Sometimes this means literally opening my Bible morning and night. One helpful suggestion I’ve seen is to take a few minutes before bed to read through the passage you intend to study in the morning.2 Lately, more Scripture intake in my life has meant turning on my audio Bible app when my hands are occupied but my mind isn’t (folding laundry, taking a walk, washing dishes, getting ready in the mornings). I’ve been surprised by how helpful and encouraging it is to listen to  Scripture being read aloud.  

While in college (and long before he was a missionary), Jim Elliot wrote in a letter to his family that he found great encouragement in pausing at noon each day to reorient his heart to Scripture, in addition to his morning and evening meditations. He wrote: 

“I would exhort you each to begin taking a few moments out with your Lover at midday…Often at noon there is a tendency for the soul to be ‘veiled,’ clouded with world-lore, filmed over with temporalities. Just a few moments spent before the Shepherd, listening to the silence of His love and telling Him the state of your soul even if it’s not warm toward Him, just to keep short accounts by simple confession—this has been a great blessing to me.”3 

When your soul isn’t warm toward the Lord, you’re still desperate for Him. When your heart is “filmed over” with “world-lore,” you don’t need a break from Him. You need more of Him, not less.  

What the stagnant stream needs is more rain to flood it with fresh water, to break up the scum on top and refresh what’s underneath. More water, not less.  The same is true for our spiritually dry seasons. We need more of Christ, not less. Stagnancy is broken up by flooding your heart with Him. Nothing else will satisfy like He does.

 

  

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Learning Intercession from Paul

The church of my childhood boasted a tiny prayer chapel some twenty yards away from the sanctuary. It couldn’t hold more than a handful of people, and there was a rotation of regularly scheduled “intercessors” who occupied the chapel during all of the church’s services. It wasn’t a place children were permitted to go, but once I was allowed inside to accompany one of my Sunday school teachers to pray. There was a kneeling bench, circular and well padded. The room was dark and cool with recessed lighting and dark tiled flooring.

I remember kneeling on the bench.
I remember not knowing what to do next.

What were we supposed to be praying for? I kept a quiet watch between partially closed eyelids, pretending to move my lips occasionally. After what seemed an eternity (but was probably only about fifteen minutes), we left the chapel, and I wondered if I was supposed to feel differently. I guessed I felt a bit holier for a brief second or two.


Though I grew up in church, my exposure to intercession was limited. Eventually, it was sequestered to the safe area of “prayers for healing,” and mostly for people five or six degrees removed from the person requesting prayer. It wasn’t until I was an adult and entrenched in local church ministry myself that I realized our default prayers for health had more to do with our discomfort about praying for internal matters of the heart than it did concern for the endlessly long list of strangers who were battling the flu or strep throat. Corporate prayer makes us uncomfortable, so we fill up the silence with safe requests. Besides, what could be kinder and more pressing than praying for the health of others?

During our first couple of years in ministry, my young pastor-husband walked our church through the prayers of the apostle Paul, and I noticed for the first time how differently Paul prayed for others than anyone I’d witnessed. Praying for someone to recover from an illness was important, but praying for their eternal state was imperative. What lasts longer than someone’s disease is their eternity. I wondered if praying for them to be anchored to Christ in their suffering might actually be more important than praying for their suffering to be removed.

One of Paul’s prayers for believers has become my new default method for praying for others. Though I do pray for healing for those who are ill, the motivation behind my prayers has changed. Wellness is not the goal. Steadfast faith in Christ is. In Ephesians 3, Paul prays for the Ephesian church to grapple with the depth of Christ’s love for them:

“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:14-19)

Prayer for Certainty of Christ’s Sacrifice

Paul prays that the Ephesian believers would be strengthened through the Spirit so they’d be certain that Christ dwells in them. Sometimes our faith is so weak we wonder if we’re even saved. We give into sinful temptation or we neglect reading the Bible or praying to the extent that we wonder if God would even want such a lousy follower. Paul prayed that the Ephesian believers would have certainty that Jesus’ work at the cross was enough for them, that the Spirit would help them to believe with faith that Jesus lives in those who have repented and believed. Deep faith in Christ’s atoning work and God’s kept promises is something we all need, and I’ve found Paul’s prayer to be an insightful way of praying for someone even if they’ve not disclosed their personal requests.

Prayer for Certainty of Christ’s Love

Next, Paul prays that the Ephesian believers would be strong enough to comprehend the extent of Christ’s love for them. My husband once pointed out in a sermon from this passage that we need the help of the Holy Spirit just to believe that He loves us. And isn’t it true that as soon as life takes a hard turn, our first response is to question God’s love for us?

When we pray for a fellow believer to be rooted in Christ’s love, to know just how big and broad and immeasurable it is, we are praying that they’d believe they are fully loved by Him even when circumstances suggest otherwise. Circumstances change. Jesus never does. His love is too deep to understand but too large to ignore. When you pray for others, pray that they would be confident in the Lord’s love for them.

Recently I heard Paul’s words about Christ’s love tumble from my husband’s mouth as we prayed together with someone who was walking through an unimaginably difficult trial. What this hurting believer needed wasn’t a promise that “God’s got this” but a reminder anchored in Scripture that God loved her with a deep, wide, high, long kind of love—a love that guaranteed He would never leave her.

Prayer for Certainty of Christ’s Sufficiency

Paul squeezes in one last entreaty into this passage that barely fills a verse but sums up pretty much everything I want everyone to pray over me from now until I see Jesus face-to-face. He prays that the believers in Ephesus would know Christ’s love that they may be “filled with all the fullness of God” (3:19). As believers, we wear Jesus’ righteousness, we’re reconciled to God, and we’re indwelled by the Holy Spirit. Here’s the thing: we cannot be empty when we’re filled with the fullness of God. So when I pray Ephesians 3:19 for other believers, I plead with God to assure them that He alone is the source of their satisfaction. I pray that they would put down whatever they’re seeking for fulfillment or affirmation and turn to find it endlessly in Christ. He is enough for us. In Him we lack nothing. When sorrows press in, when pain captures our allegiance, when sin seems tantalizingly safe, Jesus is enough for us.

During the height of my years living with a painful, chronic disease, I did desire to be free from it. I thirsted for a night of sleep untainted by gripping pain. And yet, more than freedom from pain, I desired to be faithful with it. For what good was my relationship with Christ is He wasn’t enough to sustain me in illness? If I trusted Him with my eternity, I could trust Him with my life.

Paul’s prayer for certainty in Christ, His love, and His sufficiency is what I desire for others to pray for me. And tying my requests for others as much as possible to the truths of Scripture has changed the way I approach both corporate and intercessory prayer. Praying in ways that align with Scripture has resulted in a prayer list that bears many answered requests. Some seem like failed answers by worldly, health-focused standards. But we are casting our eyes farther than the reach of our diseases. Though I pray for wellness and healing for those I love who suffer, I now know that praying for their hearts to be certain of God’s love for them and His good purposes may pin them closer to His side than physical healing might do.

Paul closes his prayer by extolling the Lord’s great power and sovereignty. I think we can follow suit in our prayers for and with others. We can entrust them to God after praying for them, knowing that He can work more good than we even think to ask for. We can pray and relinquish fear or worry because God will be glorified in His people throughout all generations.

“Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” (Eph. 3:20-21)

Though I do pray for healing for those who are ill, the motivation behind my prayers has changed. Wellness is not the goal. Steadfast faith in Christ is. Share on X

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Devoted to Prayer: the Gift of Keeping a Record

I crossed off her name from my list.

Scratching in yesterday’s date next to her name, I felt the pressure of tears behind my eyes. A faithful saint who fought brain cancer for several years finally went to be with Jesus yesterday. I haven’t seen her since we bumped into one another at a friend’s wedding over a decade ago. I first heard of her brain tumor after my mom had been diagnosed with her own brain tumor. The difference was that my mom’s wasn’t malignant. I have prayed daily for Mary for over two years. I realized this morning that my last prayer for her was yesterday, and I missed her in the moments of quiet this morning. I prayed for her family instead. I couldn’t understand at first why I grieved so for someone that’s not part of my regular life. But prayer has the power to tether your heart to another whether they know it or not. When you pray for someone, you become invested in their life, even from afar.

My prayer list has changed quite a lot over the past year.  It’s a real list, handwritten—a page of regular copy paper folded in half and taped to the inside cover of my Bible. I pray through it every morning and thumb through it in my memory when I can’t sleep at night. The structure keeps me focused, helps me fight against making grocery lists or having imaginary conversations with people I’m supposed to be praying for. The list keeps me honest. If I tell you I’ll pray for you, your name goes on the list. Otherwise, I’m guaranteed to forget.

Crossing things from the list doesn’t seem to happen often, but when I reflect over the course of a year, I can see the Lord at work in ways I would have missed if not for the record keeping that comes with the list.

Just this year, I have had the pleasure of crossing off requests for repentance and faith while also grieving the lines of ink that run through names of several church members who died. With joy I crossed off the name of one imprisoned for the gospel that was physically freed recently. With similar joy, I prayed for one still imprisoned for poor decisions who has been spiritually freed through the gospel. I’ve prayed for years for a young missionary family in training that will be leaving to go to an unreached people group on the other side of the globe in just a few weeks. I moved a pastor’s family from the ministry column to the suffering column. I wrote down the date of my son’s profession of faith next to his name with bold ink and a splotchy tearstain. I added several more names to the column for unbelievers.

A list isn’t always necessary, and it isn’t commanded Scripture. But it can help you obey the mandates about prayer that are biblical. Paul exhorts us in Colossians 4:2, “Devote yourselves to prayer; stay alert in it with thanksgiving.” Devotion to prayer begins with making regular time for it. Staying alert in prayer requires vigilance and gratitude. And this is where the list can really help. I thought at first that Paul was using alert in the way I struggle with the word early in the morning when my brain is full of the cobwebs of sleep. And the list does help in that regard! But really, he meant watchfulness. Like giving your attention to prayer, being aware of your need to present your requests to God, recognizing that it’s vital to your life as a believer. It’s an active word, not passive. In the way that we must discipline ourselves for godliness, prayer requires practice and a vigilant heart. Distractions, iPhones, grocery lists, and fatigue are always waiting on the other side of vigilance.

The list helps me stay vigilant in the fight for daily prayer, but it also helps me to pray with gratitude. Thankfulness isn’t one my gifts, I’m sorry to say. When I’ve prayed for the Lord to teach me gratitude, I often wonder what in the world the answer to that prayer would look like. But honestly, prayer is the answer to that prayer. Prayer reminds me that I do not have to control everything, that I don’t have to worry about everyone on my list, that I can trust God with the names inked across the scrappy piece of paper taped to the inside of my Bible. Prayer reveals my helplessness in the best way. Prayer is a huge sigh of relief that lifts my eyes to the power of the God I pray to. Prayer reminds me that God is sovereignly working in all things, that He loves His people more than I do, and that He will accomplish His purposes in His time in His way. Gratitude wells up in me when I can pray for all these names and broken stories and know that God can redeem anyone and any story.

Prayer reminds me that God is sovereignly working in all things, that He loves His people more than I do, and that He will accomplish His purposes in His time in His way. Share on X

When names linger long on my list, I am sometimes tempted to give up. They’ll never believe, they’ll never grow in faith, they’ll never be healed in the way I want them to. But the little horizontal lines sprinkled throughout the list are really little stones of remembrance. Little Ebenezers. Little reminders that the names are people God has healed, some of physical illness, some of spiritual deadness. Sometimes he’s used the lack of physical healing to lead to spiritual healing. Sometimes the lack of physical healing in one He uses to bring about saving faith in another. We don’t know how His mind works or why He seems silent sometimes. But asking for Him to be glorified in the life of each printed name teaches me to trust Him. Over the years, I’ve acquired stacks of half pages with smatterings of crossed-off names. They go inside my journals, and occasionally, I stumble across one. Some of the names appear still yet on my current list. Others are witnesses of God’s past faithfulness. Every name scratched through reminds me that God is good and sovereign and faithful, even if His goodness is hard to grasp in the moment the pen runs through a name.

I grieved to scratch through Mary’s name. Were those years of prayers wasted? Not at all. Mary is with Christ, fully healed, whole, and full of joy. Someday I’ll look back at this year’s list and see the line through her name. I’ll note the date which was both the last day she saw Christ dimly and the first time she saw Him fully. And I’ll remember that God taught me to trust Him with the people on my list. Sometimes with tears, sometimes with joy, always with hope.

 

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How to Pray for Believers

Nothing has encouraged my relationships with other believers like praying consistently for them. I used to feel embarrassed by my often-offered platitude, “I’ll pray for you,” because I seldom followed through, and I knew it. When I did happen to remember to pray for someone as promised, it usually amounted to an awkward and rushed, “Lord, help them.”

Now there’s nothing wrong with a “Lord, help them,” prayer. Sometimes there aren’t words to express the anguish we feel in prayer, and for that we have the Holy Spirit stepping in on our behalf and offering the prayers we need to the Father, even when our words fail us (see Romans 8:26-27). The Lord knows your heart; He’s not expecting prayers that are punctuated with five-syllable words or rich in flowery prose. He just expects you to pray.

When the Lord convicted me that the bulk of my prayer life consisted of hurried “help them” prayers and little else, I began a more organized approach to intercession that carved out room for more intentional prayer for others. It was then that I realized I wasn’t sure how to pray for other people. Did I pray for success? Happiness? Trouble-free living?

Thankfully, the Lord equips us to obey His commands, and we have some helpful examples of intercessory prayer in the Word. There are several I could pull from, and Paul’s prayer for the Colossian church in Colossians 1 is where I am currently anchoring my prayers for others. Paul’s prayer gets to the heart of what every believer needs, and that is to be filled with the knowledge of God.

And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy; giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. Colossians 1:9-14

Paul prays for the Colossians to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to bear fruit in every good work, to please the Lord, to endure with patience and joy, to live with gratitude for what God has done in saving them—but all of this is rooted in one central request: growth in the knowledge of God.

The primary way to grow in our knowledge of God is through His Word. Sometimes we forget that when we’re studying Scripture, we are learning a Person, not just reading a book. The Bible isn’t a regular book! It is God’s chosen means of revelation of Himself to us. Growing in our understanding of God’s good character, His love, His holiness, His might, His wisdom has a transformative effect on our lives. Dwelling on Him actually changes us and makes us more like Him! Fixing our gaze on God can increase our holiness and wither our sin. Simply put, we become what we behold, and when we behold God diligently in His Word, He conforms us more and more into His image (see Romans 12:1-2).

We become what we behold, and when we behold God diligently in His Word, He conforms us more and more into His image. Share on X

So when praying for believers to bear fruit and persevere in the faith, that prayer is ultimately anchored in a petition for them to behold God in His Word, to develop a hunger for the Scriptures, and to value and treasure it the way God does. From that will flow fruitfulness and growth and joy. We cannot grow in the faith apart from the spiritual wisdom that comes from the Word of God and the help of the Holy Spirit.

My prayer for my brothers and sisters in Christ usually ends with a plea that they will love Christ more than anything and that they will be happiest in Him. These are the results of growing in the knowledge of God: joy and contentment in Christ. As I pray Colossians 1 over the believers on my prayer list, I can think of no better request than that they find their joy in Christ. Everything else—provision, health, contentment—everything else finds its rightful place under the umbrella of knowing and becoming like the Lord. Those other struggles we pray for (and we should pray for them!) are rightly viewed when a believer’s lens is the enduring Word and faithfulness of God.

 

 

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Pray With a List

I can’t remember when I began praying with a list. It’s probably been five years or more, and I only tried it because at the time, my pastor-husband had shared with our congregation his methodical plan to pray for each member of the church throughout the week. A list, I remember thinking, a list might help me. The trouble is–I really hate lists.

Sometimes I picture the inside of my head as a spiderweb. There are a thousand threads running in a hundred different directions, and when it comes time to sit quietly and pray, my brain attempts to follow every thread in every direction at once. My prayers had long been foggy amalgamations of confession, grocery lists, attempts at intercession, and imaginary conversations with people I was supposed to be praying for. And because my planned prayer time is early in the morning, I confess that sometimes my prayers included a short nap. For years, my practice of prayer was a disastrous spider-webbing of thoughts that didn’t really amount to a conversation with the Lord. It’s not that He can’t make sense of my ramblings; He certainly does. Thankfully, He intercedes for us and turns our intelligible meanderings into proper prayers before the Father (Rom. 8:26-27). But I always felt that my prayers were perhaps wasteful because I could never seem to focus. Furthermore, it was embarrassing to realize that I frequently promised people I would pray for them only to add their requests to the giant vortex of swirling randomness in my head. Usually, I just forgot to pray for them. And because prayer was such a daily fight, I didn’t try very hard to overcome it, which means I handed out a lot of empty promises to pray for people.

But a list, now that was an interesting thought. A list for prayer? It seemed wooden and mechanical, a little like taking note cards with bullet points into a conversation with my husband so I wouldn’t forget to talk to him about certain things. What kind of relationship could grow out of something as unexciting and monotonous as a list?

Strangely enough, praying with a list changed my life.

I realize that’s a grandiose statement–“changed my life.” You wouldn’t look at me and notice any physical changes, nor do my circumstances or surroundings look much different. No, the change was an interior one. And if you’ve followed Jesus for very long, you know that everything flows from what is happening inside you. Behavior only changes in response to the changes that occur in the heart as the Lord teaches us from His Word, convicts us of sin, and deepens our affections for Him. Praying through a list kept me focused, ordered my thoughts, and directed my supplications toward the only One who can do anything about anything. Whatever passage I’d studied just prior to praying often came up in my prayer as application leaned into supplication. I don’t want to walk away from what I learn and forget it; I want to obey it.

Praying to God who spoke the Scriptures helped me to keep His words with me throughout the day. They came up often in my conversations. Focused prayer helped me to better remember what I’d read and studied. Prayer bound together what I’d learned in my head with what I needed to know with my heart. Most of my prayer is devoted to other people, so learning to pray for others each morning has taught me to love more intentionally and to follow through with my declarations to pray for someone. I failed so miserably in intercessory prayer in the past that I now feel the need to convince people I really mean it when I say I’ll pray for them.

While this shift in my spiritual life wasn’t apparent to anyone else, it deepened my relationship with God. Being disciplined in prayer reminded me that in all my Bible study and intercession, I am engaging with a Person, not just checking off a list. As counter-intuitive as it might seem, a list was the springboard for faithfulness in prayer. I still have a long way to go to be a person whose life is marked by prayer, but the more I spend time in intentional daily prayer, the more eager I am to grow that time. I do still practice sporadic moments of prayer throughout the day, of course, but I would argue that every Christian should seek uninterrupted blocks of intentional prayer.

Practically Speaking

Look, my list is of the pen and paper sort. I am working hard to reduce the amount of time I spend on devices, and I’ve learned that for me personally, my Bible study and prayer time must absolutely be device-free. That said, if you have more self-control than I do, there’s an app called Prayer Mate that may help you organize your prayer list and keep up with it.

My list works in concentric circles. It starts with confession, praise, and supplication for my own sanctification. I believe I must address the darkness in my own heart before I begin praying for others. I then work outward from myself, praying for my husband, my children, my church family, my physical family, my close friends, my unbelieving friends and acquaintances, those in need of physical healing, fellow ministry families, church planters and missionaries, the persecuted church, the nations. Under the categories that have several people listed, I have assigned certain people to certain days of the week. As a result, I pray through most of the list daily, and all of the list weekly. For accountability’s sake, I tell people when I pray for them. And also, I just want them to know! My friend, Ranelle, knows I pray for her on Wednesday mornings and will often submit specific requests. My fellow ministry friends, the Carmacks, know I spend time interceding for them on Thursdays.

I fit the entire list onto a regular 9 x 11.5 piece of copier paper folded in half and taped to the inside cover of my Bible. I rewrite it and date it once or twice a year, removing the old copies and storing them in my journals. It is a huge blessing to look through an old list and see the ways God has answered different prayers. Some requests change over the months; some are crossed through, and some stay the same for years at a time. Just today I crossed through a specific request I’ve ached over during my mornings in prayer this summer. Seeing the Lord answer such specific prayers for people I’ve prayed for is something I will never, ever tire of.

The common thread in every prayer for every person is the plea for them (and me) to love Christ the most. So many troubles, trials, and fears are rightly viewed and endured when a heart finds its treasure first and foremost in Christ. If you’re not sure how to pray for someone, pray that all their hope and joy would be securely anchored to Christ, that their affections for Him would rule their heart. If you feel the things you’re praying fall short or miss the mark, pray the Scriptures over the people on your list. When you’re distressed or anxious, pray the Psalms. Look at Jesus’ prayer in His Sermon on the Mount and pray that you would live in submission to the Father and in forgiveness toward others (Matt. 6:9-13). Locate the pastoral prayers of Paul and pray them (many are located at the beginning and/or ending of his epistles). Speak the names on your list and pray that their hearts would be enlightened so they know the hope of God’s calling (Eph. 1:17-19). Pray that they may walk worthy of the Lord, bearing fruit in every good work (Col. 1:9-10). This isn’t some kind of magical formula. No, it’s agreeing with the Lord what is good for His people and speaking His Word back to Him.

From List to Love

We’re commanded to pray. Not because God depends on it but because we do. Not because He is needy, but because we are desperately so. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Paul tells us repeatedly to pray without ceasing (Romans 12:12, Eph. 6:18, Col. 4:2, 1 Thess. 5:17), so the practice of prayer isn’t optional for us. However, we might need some organization to help us obey. While praying through a list might feel awkward at first, let the list serve you as you train your thoughts to be still for prayer. Eventually, praying in categories can become a helpful habit you don’t have to think about. By all means, deviate from the list as you pray. There should be freedom in prayer. The list is a tool, not a rule. But if you’re like me and you need some help focusing to pray, the list can help you do that.

Every now and then I get lax and find myself needing to be more vigilant with my list, but I know that the exercise of discipline will aid in engaging my heart and mind. Eventually, you move from duty to delight. Praying through specific names will grow from list to love. And what used to be a swirl of random spurts of confession and supplication can become a conversation between a dearly loved child and a Father who dearly loves. God may use prayer to change things, but He will certainly use it to change you.

God may use prayer to change things, but He will certainly use it to change you. Share on X

Additional helpful resources on prayer:

Praying Together by Megan Hill

Prayer by Tim Keller

 

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What is a Praying Life?

It was summertime when it happened. I remember that because my grandmother’s second story bedroom had a big window where warm summer sun poured into her room, making her collection of succulent plants happy, I’m sure. I used to break off a tiny piece of her aloe plant to squeeze out some of the sticky juice. She’d show me how to rub it into my hands. Nature’s lotion.

She had the greenest thumb of anyone I’ve known. Her two-story sunroom was filled from top to bottom with plants and small trees. Her elephant ear plant was nearly twenty feet tall. We lived with her for a year while my parents built a new home, and it was nearly like living in a greenhouse. Outside, she had acres and acres of canvas upon which to pull beauty from the earth. I remember summers spent filling up plastic gallon buckets of blueberries from the ten foot tall bushes next to the pond, and I’m certain there was a lot of complaining on my part about the heat, the chiggers, and the southern humidity. My grandmother worked circles around us all, and she reaped the rewards for her many hours of gardening with a bounty of fruit, vegetables, and an indoor flower garden.

But my grandmother was good at something else, and like the seasons of fruit picking and weeding, it was summer when I realized that more important to her than her gardening was prayer.

I was about nine years old that warm summer day we came for a visit. When my grandfather opened the front door alone, I ran to find my grandmother. I burst through her bedroom door to announce our arrival but stopped in my tracks when I discovered her kneeling in front of a small padded bench, her Bible fanned out in front of her. Her eyes were closed, her face a picture of intent determination, her lips moving silently. I tiptoed backwards out of the room and shut the door as delicately as I could. I stood in the hallway, hand on the door knob, uncertain of what to do next. I knew I’d interrupted something important, but it was years before I understood the significance of my grandmother’s powerful life of prayer.

“Devote yourselves to prayer. Stay alert in it with thanksgiving.” Colossians 4:2

A decade later I was rummaging through my grandmother’s attic searching for some random end tables and chairs to furnish my apartment, and my grandmother was pulling out odds and ends I might find useful while telling me to be safe living on my own.  She prayed for me every day, she said. Standing in the attic, I suddenly remembered her in the sunbathed bedroom with the bench and the Bible and the aloe vera plants, and I knew she wasn’t merely giving me a motherly platitude. She was telling the truth. She really did pray for me every single day. Fifteen years after that, I stood at her funeral with my husband and children and greeted people I didn’t know who clung to my hands and wept with gratitude at the ways my grandmother had given of her time, money, possessions, and most of all–prayer. More obvious than the bushels of blueberries we’ve eaten over the years or the number of times she had to cut back the elephant ear plant is the fruit of my grandmother’s many decades of intentional prayer.

“Pray constantly. Give thanks in everything, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. Don’t stifle the Spirit.” 1 Thessalonians 5:17-19

 

How Did She Do it?

I don’t think the path to a praying life happens accidentally. That humid Tennessee morning when I interrupted my grandmother’s prayer time wasn’t a one-time thing. It was an every day occurrence. My grandfather met me in the hall that morning and said, “She won’t come out until she’s done praying. Come eat some breakfast while you wait.” And I’d padded off to the kitchen with him where we ate sausage and biscuits and drank heavily sugared coffee under the skylight that warmed the kitchen counter with as much light as the bedroom full of aloe vera plants and intercessory prayer.

My grandmother’s morning ritual of prayer time was exactly that–a ritual she wouldn’t give up even if it meant missing a few minutes with her grandchildren. I remember feeling the weight of importance as I stood outside the bedroom door I’d closed gently. I remembered it when she insisted that she prayed for me daily. I felt the magnitude of it when I stood in the funeral line and listened to a stream of stories from strangers who’d been touched by my grandmother’s walk with Christ. She prayed every single day, and not just little sentence prayers sent up in moments of frustration throughout her day (although I’m sure there was plenty of that), but in regular, intentional hours of prayer carved out of her mornings. Those were her times for prayer and nothing else. She prayed with an open Bible and, I’m sure, a list.

“Pray at all times in the Spirit with every prayer and request, and stay alert in this with all perseverance and intercession for all the saints.” Ephesians 6:18

 

Why Did She Do it?

My grandmother wasn’t perfect by any means. But she walked closely with Christ who was and is perfect, and she emulated her life after His. Jesus, who walked the earth as both man and God, deemed it entirely necessary to slip away from the crowds and His friends and everyone who wanted something from Him to spend time praying to the Father.

“Yet He often withdrew to deserted places and prayed.” (Luke 5:16)

“Very early in the morning while it was still dark, He got up, went out, and made His way to a deserted place. And He was praying there.” (Mark 1:35 

“After dismissing the crowds, He went up on the mountain by Himself to pray. When evening came, He was there alone.” (Matt. 14:23)

It was important to Jesus, who actually was and is God, to spend time praying alone. It should be important for those of us who are His followers to do so as well. If He who was God needed to pray, how much more do we who aren’t all-knowing and all-powerful? Our struggle with sin and forgetfulness necessitates a praying life.

Beyond emulating Christ’s example, prayer is an act of obedience to Him. Jesus gives us instructions on how to do it in Matthew 6:9-15 and gives us a beautiful example through His high priestly prayer in John 17. He also tells us how not to pray in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector in Luke 18:9-14. There doesn’t seem to be room for a question of whether or not we should pray. When Jesus address prayer, He tells and shows us how to do it. In the New Testament epistles, Paul gives us plenty of exhortations to be devoted to prayer (see 1 Thess. 5:17-18, Phil. 4:6, Eph. 6:18, Col. 4:2). It’s never a question of if but when you pray. In the Bible, the assumption is that followers of Christ will pray.

In the Bible, the assumption is that followers of Christ will pray. Share on X

After obedience, prayer is an act of faith, I think. It’s acknowledging that only God is sovereign and that we are powerless to do anything except plead with Him to move. It’s like the Israelites in the wilderness watching the tabernacle for the next step. If the cloud went up, they could pack up and move. If the cloud stayed hovering over the holy section of the tent, they stayed put. You move, we move. You stay, we stay. I think of prayer a bit like that. It’s waking up in the morning and saying, Lord, I can’t move until You do. I can’t do anything without Your Spirit leading the way. So I’ll open up this Bible and listen to Your voice, and I’ll ask You to help me obey it. I won’t take a step that’s outside the path You illuminate with Your Word. This is the way, help me to walk in it. 

“Don’t worry about anything, but in everything, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God which surpasses every thought, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:6-7

My grandmother taught me a lot about regular, intentional prayer. In addition to praying over the Scriptures, she prayed for others constantly. I’ve learned over the last several years that I cannot in good conscience tell someone I’m praying for them if I don’t have a plan to do so. For me, this looks like a handwritten list taped to the inside cover of my Bible. I have things I pray for every single day, and some things I pray for weekly. Working through the list keeps my mind focused in my early morning hour of prayer, and it ensures that I actually do pray for the people I’ve promised I’ll pray for.

Prayer is the way I work through my personal struggle with sin, it’s how I lay down my worries about my kids, my church, my finances, my work, my marriage. Prayer is like kneeling at a padded bench by the window and the aloe plant and saying, Lord, where else can I go? Only You have the words of life. Only You have the power to be sovereign over anything. Only You can work good from this tangled up mess in front of me. Please be here in the midst of it. Prayer helps me to walk away from my worries trusting that life won’t fall apart if I let go of it. Prayer is acknowledging that God is sovereign and I am not.

 

After All These Years

I took home exactly one plant from all the funeral flowers at my grandmother’s memorial service two years ago. It’s a peace lily plant, and though I’ve nearly killed it at least a dozen times, it’s still alive and puts out a white bloom at the oddest times of the year. I did not inherit my grandmother’s green thumb, and I’m okay with that. Far more important is the heritage of spiritual discipline she passed down to me that sometimes seems hard but in reality is the beautiful work of perseverance that is absolutely necessary to the Christian life.

Prayer does feel like work sometimes, I think. Like any spiritual discipline, it takes a while for prayer to become a habit, but also like the other spiritual disciplines, the rewards are worth every ounce of effort. A prayerful life doesn’t happen by accident; it happens by intention and affection for Christ. If you can’t muster up either of those things, pray for the discipline to pray! Be like Tozer who prayed, “I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still.”  Even a plea to desire to pray is the right prayer.

I’m a slow learner, but here’s what I know: there is freedom in laying down your burdens before the Lord each morning and saying, “I can’t. You can. Your will be done.” There is an unearthly gratitude that grips your heart when you cross off your list the name of a person you’ve prayed to come to Christ every day for ten years. There is blessed conviction that crawls its way out of your chest when you speak the ways you’ve sinned before God as you’ve read His words. Prayer is how we understand who we are in light of God’s sovereignty. Prayer is how He wants us to stay close to Him. Prayer is how we open our controlling, conniving little hands and say, “You are wise and I am not. Help me to walk in Your way.” It is, in every way, a gift of free access that Jesus made possible when He took on flesh and carried our sins and sorrows to the cross.

“Therefore, brothers, since we have boldness to enter the sanctuary through the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way He has opened for us through the curtain (that is, His flesh), and since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed in pure water.” Hebrews 10:19-22

Jesus died to set us free from sin, so we should dive deep into that freedom by running through the flung-wide sanctuary doors to call out to the Father.

 

 

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Keep a Soft Heart

Repeatedly inked on the pages of my journal for the past ten months are the words keep a soft heart.

Truly, it has taken all thirty-six years of my life to develop a one-sentence prayer that expresses one of my deepest and most regular needs.

Keep a soft heart.

Truly, it has taken all thirty-six years of my life to develop a one-sentence prayer that expresses one of my deepest and most regular needs.

I searched for the words to express it in my teens, scrambled to articulate it in my twenties, and now in my mid-thirties I’m finally learning to name the need that stretches its way out of my chest with my first conscious breath every morning. In the lifelong march against bitterness, cynicism, unforgiveness, it is my anthem: keep a soft heart. Against the old, dead version of me who tries to resurrect herself with frightening force and regularity, the petition for a soft heart has become my steady, daily battle cry.

You know what I mean, right? That prickly, closed-up version of your inner being so full of rough angles and hard edges that you refuse to let anyone inside, refuse to obey what you know the Lord is calling you to do, refuse to open yourself up to anything that might make you uncomfortable—you know what I’m talking about, yes? It’s the heart that gives a cold shoulder to all that is meaningful in the Christian life, that shuts down to all that warms the soul, that resists the unifying thread that knits us together with other believers. It’s seasonal or perhaps a coping mechanism, but at its core it’s destructive. While it might seem temporarily safe to wall oneself away from vulnerability within the Church or before God, I’ve learned lately that what aids me best in my relationships with other believers, what helps me more readily submit my desires to the Lord’s plans, what most encourages me to lay aside my rigid, Pharisaic worldview is this: a soft heart.

Why a soft heart? Why not a determined heart or a solid heart?

When it comes to an open, submissive heart (for I think that’s essentially what we’re talking about here), I think of the word malleable. Not in a doormat kind of way, but in a teachable, empathetic, walk-a-mile-in-their-shoes kind of way. I want a heart that is workable, like putty, in the hands of my Savior. When I consider the act of taking up my cross and following Jesus, malleable seems the prerequisite for dying to myself and, more specifically, my pride. I want a heart that doesn’t freeze up or bristle at correction. I want a heart that throbs with openness even when it is costly. I want the pulse of my spiritual life’s blood to beat with a disarming vulnerability. I want to hold staunchly to truth while also clinging tightly to love. I think the key in holding the tension between truth and love is a soft heart.

A soft heart knows its place. A soft heart understands true humility. A soft heart knows who it is before God, knows it is dust, knows it is equally guilty of all the things it wants to keep record of when it comes to the hurts inflicted by others. A soft heart knows if it kept an honest record of wrongs, it could not stand but for the covering of Jesus.

A soft heart is the first thing I notice in a fellow believer who receives correction with a nodding head and a quiet acquiescence. When I see it in someone else, I find myself instantly warmed toward them because it reminds me of Jesus who was obedient to the point of death, who laid aside His desires for His Father’s. A heart yielded to its Savior is a proclamation of God’s enduring work in that person. The fruit of self-control and gentleness make much of Jesus when it comes to both spiritual-familial relationships and plans that veer wildly off the rails. How I long for my first response to suffering, to criticism, to hope deferred to be a soft one! How I long for my first response to be an acknowledgment that Jesus is the captain of this ship, that He commands my destiny.

Though you may not see the gradual softening, God is still molding you, rolling those hard angles in His hands, sanding down what's rough and bristly into something soft, malleable, open.

How do we keep a soft heart?

Prayer

Regular, persistent prayer cannot be understated. The petition for a soft heart is the prayer that has rewritten itself more times than I can count on the pages of my life. I imagine I’ll be praying it until my last breath. But what’s beautiful about the companionship of prayer and sanctification is that God is pleased to answer the prayers for a soft heart. His desires are for us to be rooted and grounded in His love, to be filled with His fullness, to be like Him. (Eph. 3;17-19). Though you may not see the gradual softening, God is still molding you, rolling those hard angles in His hands, sanding down what’s rough and bristly into something soft, malleable, open. Keep praying for a heart that is open and submissive to Him. It’s my daily prayer for myself.

Scripture

Scripture speaks to our thorny hearts. Just this week, my study in Ephesians addressed the very topic in its reminder of what life in Christ should look like:

You took off your former way of life, the old self, that is corrupted by deceitful desires; you are being renewed in the spirit of your minds; you put on the new self, the one created according to God’s likeness in righteousness and purity of the truth…All bitterness, anger and wrath, shouting and slander must be removed from you, along with all malice. And be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one another, just as God also forgave you in Christ. Therefore, be imitators of God, as dearly loved children. And walk in love, as the Messiah also loved us and gave Himself for us, a sacrificial and fragrant offering to God.

Ephesians 4:22-24, 31-5:2 (HCSB)

In years past I have allowed hurts, closed doors, and the Lord’s deviation from my plans (or, to put it in realistic terms, my lack of submission to His plans) to harden the outer edges of my heart. Learn from my mistakes: this only results in an insular, closed-off, arms-length existence. This is not how we were meant to live as believers. We were meant to live as the many, varied moving parts that only collectively make up the body of Christ. The Word is a both a telescope and a mirror, showing us first the good character of God so we can then see ourselves rightly. When the Word shines the light on the ugliness down deep, we can then see the grace that abounds to us.

John Piper puts it well: “If we are ever to grasp the gospel, we must grasp the ugliness of our sin. If we never admit that we don’t just do bad things — we are bad — the gospel will never land in power. Our sins will always be healed lightly. I need to crawl into the cesspool of my heart and claw my way to the bottom, believing there’s Jesus’s blood down there, not hell. But it’s at the bottom of our sin, not only part way down.”

The Word is a both a telescope and a mirror, showing us first the good character of God so we can then see ourselves rightly. When the Word shines the light on the ugliness down deep, we can then see the grace that abounds to us.

Look to Christ.

“And walk in love, as the Messiah also loved us and gave Himself for us…” (Ephesians 5:2a)

In Jesus, we find not a trace of bitterness or grudge-holding. Though direct in His delivery of truth, He still exuded empathy and kindness. He is our standard, the one we should strive to imitate. Living in the likeness of God, we must wrestle down what’s old and dead and dying in us by recognizing who we are because of what Jesus has done. Rather than ruminating on derailed plans or perceived injustices, look at the perfect person of Christ instead. This requires us to circle back to step two and read the Scriptures. Fixing our gaze on Jesus is an essential step in our sanctification, in throwing off what’s old and wearing what’s new, in this heart-softening process. Scottish 19th century pastor Robert Murray M’Cheyne said this “for every look at self, take ten looks at Christ.” I can’t really improve on his advice. Let the time spent looking at Christ far outweigh the time spend navel-gazing.

When we believe the gospel and repent of our sins, the Lord gives us a new heart that beats for Him. My prayer to keep that heart soft is not an attempt to add to His work but simply to echo what He has already purposed to do for those of us who believe: “Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely. And may your spirit, soul, and body be kept sound and blameless for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful, who will also do it.” (1 Thessalonians 5:23-24, HCSB)

Photos by Gaelle Marcel and  Jamez Picard  on Unsplash

 

 

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