When someone tells me, “I pray for relief, but it doesn’t come!” I find myself wincing in pain. The statement conveys pain and desperation in those simple words. You have likely felt that way at times as well. As you go through the tough day to day issues, you likely find yourself praying for many things.
You may find yourself praying for peace, love, companionship or relief. There are also those prayers for direction, patience and resolution. At times, you may find yourself praying just to confess what you are struggling with in order to get it out. I firmly believe in prayer and find that each of these has a time and a place during recovery and healing. Even years after the affair, the healing may still be continuing.
It has also amazed me that there are some of you who either do not know how to pray or find yourself unsure what to pray for. When you are not sure what to pray for, or how to pray it is hard to know if there is ever any answer to your prayers.
Prayer is a powerful part of the healing process. Since the wounding occurred on many levels of your life, you need healing on many levels as well. Prayer is one of the ways of bringing healing to those many levels.
Praying aloud is healing in many ways. One of those ways is that on verbalizing what you are feeling or struggling with, your mind is finally able to comprehend what has been going on inside of you. Although you thought you were thinking with your mind, if your mind is not clear on what the problem is, it will not be clear on what the answer is. Prayer is a way to help that along.
When you pray, the conscious, problem solving parts of your brain finally have a clear idea of what is going on. The simple truth is that vague prayers get vague results. You need clear prayers if you hope for clear answers and clear direction.
Prayer also has a way of releasing pent up energies and feelings. There is power in confessing those things through prayer. It is a way of finally getting those internal issues and struggles into the open. Once they are ‘in the open’, you will need to take an honest look at them. Prayer is a way that starts that process.
Prayer also opens up supernatural possibilities. It is not magical, in the sense that you speak things into existence. Prayers does open up new possibilities and gives you access to new insights and power that you need during this time.
When I lived in the Houston area, there was a local church (Grace Community Church) that advertised their weekly prayer meetings as “Power Lines”. The image of prayer being a power line has stayed with me. There is a simple truth conveyed in that image. They even went so far as to refer to those who helped you in the prayer meetings as ‘powerlines” as well. It was a very encouraging way to communicate the power of prayer to the public.
One of the truths about prayer is that many times, you have answers but do not always recognize or want to accept the answers that you have been given. At times, you may find relief. At other times, you may find yourself having the patience and attitude to handle the tough times rather than finding relief from the tough times. You may also find that you have the courage to work through the tough times rather than experience relief.
I also have to ask you, “What is it that you have been praying for?” The thing you are praying for may be what you are experiencing. For example, when you pray for patience, there are some of you that are expecting to soon find peace of mind and a sudden change in temperament. When instead, you find that things suddenly fall to pieces and you are at wits end in dealing with it. You forgot that the ONLY way to develop patience is by going through trials.
With that in mind, you will want to be careful what you pray for. You may have the answer, but not realize it.
Best Regards,
Jeff
One Response
Good one