Prayer: Anxious Supplication or Peaceful Conversation?

My husband and I have learned a new way to pray in the last few months. Or maybe our prayers “God, teach us how to pray” have been answered.

Knowing that we were transitioning back to a single income family of 5 from a short stint as a double income family, I was drawn to Matthew chapter 6. verse 25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?”

How does one not worry about tomorrow? How does one just pray and leave the needs with God and trust? Yes, I know that worrying can’t add one day to my life and that the world is busy running to and fro worrying about tomorrow so I am not supposed to but how is it possible not to? What happens when the rubber hits the road? Will my faith stand or will I fall back into fear-based living? Will God show up or will my worst fears be realized? (eg. “Cardboard Box living for Dummies.”)

A year ago, our prayer style was the Drive-thru method. We would pull up to the order window (always on the way to the next thing), place our order – our list of needs, wants and a desire to know him better, anxiously await any tidbits to be thrown our way (while not really expecting many) and then speed off. Once the prayer time was over we’d usually then proceed to figure out how we could get our prayers answered or maybe if it was financial, pull out the credit card and ask God to stop us if it was the wrong decision.

After the year we’ve had, we knew things had to change. Where was the fruit in our lives? Where was the life of faith we so desired? Where was the peace? How were our lives lining up with how a Christian family should look? Especially the way God has designed it to work? Did we look any different than the world? We knew the proof was in the pudding – obviously the way we were doing things, like it or not, was OUR way – not God’s way. You can go along in your own way, convinced that you’re right and everyone else is wrong and that God couldn’t possibly be serious about doing this or that but if the proof of your life is very little fruit – you have a problem. Either God is wrong or you are.

God is never wrong.

He lovingly but firmly brought our hearts to this new place. We wanted the peace. We wanted the fruit. We wanted God’s way. Even if it means looking like fools to the world. We may not even – but the fear of looking like a fool was enough to derail us.

Not anymore. What used to be anxious times of confusion and supplication have turned into peaceful conversations with an all-wise, loving God who is good and is in a good mood. We are continually amazed that our prayer times lead us to places we never imagined going. Instead of placing our order with God and then carrying on with our days we ask him what we should be asking. We listen. We daily place our needs before him and open our hearts to whatever he is saying. We pray His will, not our own. We pray His plans, not our own. We pray His ideas, His provision, His heart and ask how we fit into that plan. We ask where he is leading us and He answers!

While we are very newly on this different road and we have yet to see where it will lead us, the peace we have is a promise to us that we are in the palm of his hands. He will never leave us, nor forsake us and his mercies are new every morning.

Amen.