According to God‘s word, prayer is not an optional activity or decision made by a follower of Christ. As christians we are expected to bring before God all of the things that are going on in our lives. We should desire to be in communication with the God who saved us, but if you’re like me... at times you might question or doubt the reasoning behind prayer. It’s also easy, if your heart and mind are not in the proper places, to feel like you’re just talking to a wall or to pray without any faith or hope.
One commonly asked question is, “if God is all knowing, then why should we bother talking to Him about the things that He already knows?”. If you’re somebody wrestling with that, just wait and hear me out...
Say for instance that you are a young child and you have parents who love and care for you. If they demonstrate their love toward you, they will have boundaries and rules to some extent to protect you and build your character. Say this child were to break the rules, lie, hide things, or rebel, and not confess or say a word to their parents about it. The parents might later on find out about it from an outside source so they now know what you did despite your silence. Now you can chose to talk about it, or just wait out your punishment.
Be honest for a second, and think this through. God our Father desires a relationship with us. No religion, rules, good deeds, etc. on their own power can create a relationship with God. Just as if you were to break your parents rules, the relationship would be so much stronger, healthier, and closer bound if you go to them directly and humbly confess your wrongs. The same goes for if you sin against God, He doesn't want you to try and keep it hidden, He knows all things, and likely desires to hear from you in order to preserve and strengthen a relationship.
It might be hard to picture what i’m getting at if you don’t come from a healthy family situation, but I know personally that if I were to be more open and willing to talk about my feelings, reasonings, and areas of weakness with my parents, our bond would be a lot closer and stronger than me refusing to communicate to them.
The other commonly asked question relating to prayer is, “does God even hear me. does he even care?”. Usually someone asking this question isn’t looking for biblical proof of a “yes“ or “no“ response, they want proof. I could list areas from scripture that state that God listens to us and speaks to us, but i’ll focus more on personal experience and answered prayers that i’ve seen in the lives of others around me.
My first time actually recognizing the power of prayer was when I was at a worship night and a boy went to the front and announced that his cut on his arm had been healed after we had been huddled up in prayer groups. I was like in shock because this was no “mega church” or anybody seeking attention. We literally met in a barn and this guy was just an average middle school/high school dude. I was like panicking tbh because I had no idea those types of things could happen still today. After venturing out more to other churches and groups, I began to realize that testimonies like those were not uncommon at all so I began to pray as well... or pray with more faith than I previously had.
Yes, I will mention that there is manipulation in churches at times and as far as the healing aspect or spiritual side, not everything that you hear about is going to be true. This breaks my heart though, because I have seen real life answered prayers so it’s just my hope that if you are doubting, you don’t brush aside christianity because of a few false teachers or stories. I have had several areas of my life where specific prayers were answered and the answers were clear. I’ll just give one example though because some of them are pretty personal.
Ever since I was little it would take me forever to fall asleep at night. I’d lay awake overthinking and worrying or just fantasizing up a dream life. Even if I was tired, it was very difficult for me to fall asleep. I started having nightmares as well and just really weird, worse case scenario dreams most nights. I would try all of the things to help me fall asleep like asmr, deep breathing, melatonin, white noise, etc. but those things only helped me a tiny bit.
I told my youth leader about how I was having trouble sleeping and staying asleep and she told me that I should talk to God and pray before I try and sleep. I brushed it off for a few days and was like “i’ve been this way for so long, I can handle it a while longer. Why should God help me now”.
Thankfully after a few days however I changed my mindset and came before God asking for healing. That night my dreams (which had been about the same traumatic events for weeks before) was still me in those scary situations, but instead of me being afraid, I was the “stronger person” in my dreams. I saw suffering and I dreamt that I could pour the comfort of the Holy Spirit onto the other people instead of running away in fear.
Each day I prayed, and each day I was a different person in my dreams compared to the insecure, lost person I used to be. I dreamt of heaven, praising the lord one day with my brother, Jesus leading me, scripture verses, and just literally so much peace, comfort and joy. That being said, I can now say several months later that I am still able to fall asleep when I rest my head at night. Anxious thoughts no longer have my mind tangled up.
Maybe that sounds like a small thing to some, but for me I know that it was from God because i’ve tried to fix it myself for years before calling upon God. I will say as a reminder that not all things are in God’s will. Not all healing and relief will come, but bring it before God and ask Him in His will. Not all things will be granted to you from your earthly parents as well, and sometimes as a young child it’s hard to understand why they wouldn’t give you something that looks so fun or so good, but reality is they probably have a bigger picture in mind than the child could see or understand. Imagine how much more God can look at the big picture of your life and see what is best for you, which areas of pain or weakness will strengthen you or your love for God, as well and spread His love and comfort to others around you in the end.
Finally I will say I am by no means perfect or attempting to make myself sound like a super spiritual person. I struggle with these questions sometimes myself, as well as doubt or just flat out laziness. Sometimes I don’t have the energy to want to pray. I sin, I fall short daily, But I can still say with confidence that even if my faith is weak, that does not make God less powerful.
God is our Father, we are His children. God loves us, therefor wants to be in relationship with His children. Talking is one of the biggest forms of communication, so if you desire relationship with God, simply talk to Him because He loves you and He is trustworthy. More trust worthy than any human could possibly be for you.
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