Sometimes prayer can make us feel like we’re going crazy. Is the plea of your heart a prayer for sanity? Are you looking for a centering prayer?
It seems for me, impossible to stop praying the same prayers over and over again like a broken record.
In the past I felt like my prayers were a conversation with God, i.e.
“God, my life is quite miserable today. Please do something about it.”
I felt better once I uttered the familiar pleas almost trance like, but now I feel quite insane when I start to pray those types of prayers.
I’m not sure whether this is because I’m “growing in faith” or “diminishing in faith.”
Do your prayers for sanity give you strength?
I’m beginning to notice embarrassing patterns in my prayer life that should my prayers be thrown up on a screen for everyone to see, I might emphatically claim they’re not mine at all.
You see, I pray for things to be a certain way but only if it’s God’s will of course. Then when nothing turns out at all as I’d hoped, I thank God for knowing what is best for me.
Afterward, I try to re-examine my desires so that they might finally align with what would please God more, of course.
But it’s all turning out to seem like a little insane mind game I’m playing with myself to be able to sustain hope in the face of disappointment. Maybe I need to pray a prayer for sanity.
“Oh God, please help this to work, if it’s your will.”
“Oh God, it didn’t work, so please help me to not get stuck in this moment of disillusionment, not my will but yours, Lord.”
“But God, really, what is wrong with me? Why are my plans not your plans and why do my plans fail and how do I really know how to plan according to your will, and how can I possibly pray in accordance with your will, for who can know your thoughts when your thoughts are so much higher than mine.”
Are you still trying to learn how to pray?
So after all these years of praying, I really don’t know how to pray.
It doesn’t seem right to pray for this or to pray for that, especially when there are so many people who are sick, dying or experiencing an awful tragedy.
I should be praying that those who have less than me will finally have more.
But how can I give more when it seems I’ve given all I can want to give? Sometimes it seems like giving does not make a difference in the lives of others, anyway.
I want more, but it doesn’t seem right to try to get what I want or to pray that God will show me how to get it. Why do I want what I want?
God knows I already turn my eye blind to helping those who look like on the outside they should be able to help themselves, I walk right past, because if I’m miserable, so should they be too.
Some prayers seem more sane than others
The most earnest prayer I’ve ever prayed was for the protection of my family and the successful adoption of my husband’s siblings.
I really believed that helping orphans was in accordance with God’s will. Is that why He answered my prayers?
But from the point of a successful adoption on, nothing I pray really seems like it merits a direct answer. Nothing related to personal gain ever feels right to pray.
Why? Are there certain prayers that are just wasted breath?
For those who have children who constantly plead for the same things over and over again, until you are annoyed witless, I’m sure you’ve wondered if that’s how you sound to God.
Since He’s all powerful, can he just turn off his ears to the noisy pleas of his children for bigger homes, better jobs, nicer cars, more prestige and worldwide recognition?
I mean are we SERIOUSLY asking God for more than what He’s already given and what we fool ourselves into believing we’ve gotten for ourselves?
God tests our motives in prayer
At times before, because I was certain I could not trust my own motives, I would pray for God to purify my motives.
But not now.
I’m afraid of that prayer. I accidentally prayed it last night.
“God, please change my heart’s desires to align with yours.”
What?!? So if I changed my mind today about the whole wanting to live like Christ thing, will He answer my prayer of yesterday, against my ever-changing will?
What if I pray for sanity but God knows that a good dose of insanity will then help me to reach out to those who I would have otherwise written off as “not having it all together.”
“Has not my hand made all these things, and so they came into being?” declares the LORD.
“These are the ones I look on with favor: those who are humble and contrite in spirit, and who tremble at my word.” Isaiah 66:2
Today is a prayer for sanity
Is God still there looking on some of us with favor? Do our prayers emerge from a place of humility and contrition? Do we tremble at the thoughts of praying for things that may not be in accordance with God’s will?
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” But I do NOT yet truly fear and much less tremble.
My daughter keeps asking me for a cat over and over and over again. For her to have a cat would be against my will. But she has also started praying to God for a cat. Should I give her a cat and pray that God will change my heart about having one? Or should I keep ignoring her pleas and start praying that God will change the desires of her heart so that she will no longer carry the disappointment of not having one?
Today, I think my prayer should be a prayer for sanity.
LoveLifeLinks.com believes God’s spirit will guide you through prayer.
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