Skip to main content

You're Not Praying as Much as You Should? This is Why.

A few years ago, I read an article where the author suggested that the way we communicate with God changes in different seasons of our lives. I understood it; I agreed with it; but I couldn't very much relate to it until about 5 days ago.

I've been through a fairly difficult time in the last two weeks, and I have to admit that instead of that pushing me to speak with God more, I felt I was spending a significantly smaller amount of time praying.

That's a bad thing, right? Well, maybe not.

The truth, in fact, was: I was probably spending more time praying than usual, just not in an 'actual', 'formal', 'Dear God...' kind of way. I was consistently muttering, thinking, saying prayers throughout the day. But that's not where I'm going with this. 

The truth is: communicating with God does not remain constant through all the seasons of your life. That's something the author of that article pointed out: he went through a phase where he would go up to the hills, sit still, say nothing and just be with God. He went through a phase where it was worship music, not actual spoken prayers, that did the trick. The 'Dear God...' one-hour prayers just weren't 'appropriate' at that time.

I believe the Holy Spirit brought this article to my remembrance, to provide me with some comfort - and more importantly, remind me that "no, you are not a crap Christian" and "no, you have not forgotten God."

I'm here to tell you the same thing. 

If this is you right now; if you're going through a phase when the words are just not coming out; if you're in a place where you're not on your knees spending a lengthy amount of time in prayer, understand that you're not doing something wrong, and ask God to guide you through and keep you in constant intimacy with Him. That's what's really important.

As always, He will. 


Love,
Kunmi x


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Simple, Practical Solution To Reading More of Your Bible

At the beginning of the year, I decided I wanted to read the entire Bible - for the second time - in a year. (I also started using these amazing reading plans on my even more amazing Bible app, YouVersion. It's awesome; check it out! )  My aim is to get more of God's word into my head, mind and heart, and as a result, get to know Him better, as... "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was  God." (John 1:1) Simple, yeah? If God and His Word are one, then by getting to know one more, I get to know the other, right? But to achieve my goal, I obviously had to carve out more time to read God's Word.  Now, truth be told, I often find reading the Bible a little bit tedious (I'll have you know God appreciates my honesty), ESPECIALLY when it gets to certain, not-so-Jesus-loves-you-you-can-do-no-wrong-everything-is-all-GOOD chapters like Numbers, Leviticus and a few others (let's cut them some slack, shall we?). But I rea...

What Teaching Young Kids About The Holy Spirit Taught Me

I'm lucky enough to teach a lovely, lively bunch of children at Sunday School every week. Two weeks ago, at a Saturday session at church, I had learnt more about the Holy Spirit, who He really is and why we have Him (and need Him). Immediately, I thought: Hey, this is a great lesson to teach the kids soon. Yesterday, I decided today would be the perfect day to approach this topic with my young squad. I particularly thought this was a good idea because I needed to learn more about the Holy Spirit. While preparing to teach, I researched how to go about teaching younger children about this not-so-easy topic. You hear so much about God and Jesus, but not that much about the Holy Spirit (which they affirmed today, btw). I got help from this great Sunday School website, which suggested to use a great visual analogy: An egg. An egg is made up of three parts: The shell, egg white and yolk. Although the different parts exist, it's still an egg; each part is 'folded' into ...

What I Really Learnt About Prayer This Week

With prayer and I, it's been a mostly up-and-down relationship. We haven't always seen eye-to-eye, we've fallen out of love quite a few times, and we've oftentimes flat out ignored each other over the years. Luckily, it's been more on the 'up' lately, for which I am super glad, because God knows I need it more than anything. The real transformation came when I realised that I didn't have to say the "right" things when I prayed, speak 'Christianese' (meaningless words that God is supposed to be impressed with), or lie to God about how/what I was feeling. A good friend of mine, Jen, once said, "Don't tell God, 'Oh Lord, I just want to worship Your holy name', when in fact you are about to combust from pain, sorrow, difficulties and frustration." That statement TOTALLY changed the way I pray. Now, that's not to say that I only run to God to cry about my problems (there's ALWAYS something), and I am complet...