Imperfect Prayers

Have you ever questioned if God can hear your prayers?  I know I have.

I feel so inadequate sometimes, as I stammer through my litany of wants, and needs, and thank you’s… My list of petitions gets rattled off in fractured, staccato sentences.  I wonder how He can make sense of them.

I have friends who can light up the Spirit with words that wax eloquent.  They seem to pluck them right from the mouths of angels, and you can nearly see them ascend in reverence before the Throne.  

These are not mine.

In the midst of crisis, in the tempest of a storm, we have no hesitancy.  “God, please help… Please heal… Please find… Please mend…Please…. Hear me, God.”  We plead and beg and stutter and nearly throw ourselves down, searching for sight of Him, desperate to touch the hem of His garment.  We bring our faith full-throttle to the door, and knock as loudly as we can.

Other times, our prayers marinate in a season of hurts and difficulties and chaos.  They start out one way, and slowly ebb into another.  Our urgencies give way to resignation that we are in it for the long haul.  We begin to doubt, so we plant within our spirits every mustard seed we can find to rouse our faith to full abandon. 

And we wait.  

There are times we can’t help but wonder what is taking God so long.  Discouragement slowly replaces our resolve, to the point we realize that we have simply stopped asking, stopped praising, stopped believing that what we have asked of Him will ever come to be.  Maybe we don’t know how to pray.  Maybe He’s angry with us.  Maybe we don’t deserve His help.

Maybe that’s just me.

Of course, it’s not our job to tell God how He is to answer us.  Still, we try.  We suggest to Him how we would like everything to work out.  Like the ending of a movie, the hero will ride in and set our world back on its axis.  The girl gets the boy.  The underdog gets the job, wins the game, finishes the race.  Everyone lives happily ever after.

We know that’s just not always how it works.  

In the season I’ve been in, I’m learning things about God that I didn’t quite understand before.  I see Him now — not so much as the Save the Day kind of God — but more like the dad who teaches his kid how to ride a bike.  You’ve got to get on the bike in order to ride it.  Even when you’re afraid, you’ve got to peddle, learn how to brake, start out wobbly.  Learning to ride, means you will also fall and skin your knees a bit. 

All the while, He’s watching, cheering you on, protecting you from venturing too far out without Him.  Before you know it, you’ve mastered it.  Not because He rescued you, but because you persevered.  He’s taught you that you can. 

Life takes us down roads we never can imagine we would have to travel. Maybe it’s because there are blessings up ahead that we can’t claim as ours until we progress on the road we’re on now.  The only way to reach them, is to keep peddling. 

And so it is with our prayers. It’s not what we say that makes them effective.  It’s that we say them — Imperfect in our cadence, unrighteous in our raw need, honest in our desires to have them answered.  We yearn, we doubt, we want desperately to see Him move and mend and heal and provide.  

Sometimes, all we can do is groan.  

Our imperfect prayers are made perfect in His love for us… And what we do not say with words, He already knows what we need.  He bridges the gap for us.  He sends us grace, mercy, forgiveness, and peace. 

Yes, we still have to wait sometimes.  

God may answer us miraculously, instantaneously.  But most times, He has to do a little tinkering in us first.  He has to teach us something, so that we can know that even when we fall, we can get back up and keep on going. 

He’s always watching, always cheering, always protecting us from venturing off too far without Him. 

There is a testimony on the other side of what you are going through.  He doesn’t want perfect prayers. He wants your raw, doubt-riddled, harried, questioning, stammering ones, so that in His answer to them, He can show His power and perfection.

My words are often always the same as I lay my burdens at His feet.  “I trust You, God…Nothing is impossible for You.”

Nothing is. 

Keep praying, girl. He hears you.  

Just keep peddling.