The Struggle with Prayer Pt 1: Is God Listening?

Each person has their strengths and weaknesses. One of the areas that I constantly struggle with is prayer. I know some people can pray for days without trouble, but not me. I start out well, but unless I am careful, within a few minutes my mind has wandered off to something else, I run out of things to say, and pretty soon I give up or completely forget I was praying at all. However, I also recognize a difference in who I am when I do not spend regular time in prayer. I am shorter with my wife. I can’t concentrate as easily. I have a harder time reading scripture or trusting in God. I lack the joy and sense of peace. I know I need prayer, but I have a really hard time achieving that sometimes.

Because of this, over the years I have consciously sought out ideas and ways to pray better. Some of them have really helped me with my own prayer life. And so for the next several weeks I’m going to be posting on some of my favorite prayer techniques.

These aren’t ways to coerce God into listening to us, nor are they ways we can “guarantee” that God will answer our prayers exactly like we want them to be answered. No, these are some ways that I have found that help me to better connect with God in a meaningful conversation. Perhaps some of what has helped me might be able to help you as well. Perhaps you have some ideas about prayer you can share with me.

The first thing that usually hinders me from talking with God is that I have a hard time believing that out of all the people in this world, God actually listens to me and will answer me. This irrational worry almost always crops up when I try to prayer. And if you don’t think the other person is listening it’s really hard to have a conversation.

The way I finally found to deal with this was to write down everything I was praying for in a book. Then as each request gets answered just write down the date next to it. It’s kind of scary starting to do this because at least my fear was that I would find out that God actually wasn’t listening to me at all. But after several years of doing this I have about a third of a notebook filled with prayer requests, and page after page of them have all been answered.

So now whenever I start to pray I flip open the notebook, and as I flip past page after page of answered prayers I don’t worry as much anymore whether God is listening. I see the evidence right in front of me that God does listen. And that makes all the difference to me. I can pray with confidence, and actually believe that God is hearing me and interested in what I say. I know it sounds simple, and it takes some trust to begin, but if you don’t have a prayer journal, try it. It has made a huge impact in my life.