Listen to this podcast episode here:
When Prayer Feels Hard
I know I talk a lot about prayer. I hope you aren’t rolling your eyes every time I mention the importance of prayer, thinking, “Not again, Audrey. I get it.” But once I discovered the power of prayer in the life of a believer, I was hooked. I believed in the power of prayer, and when I became a mother of three, my commitment to daily prayer went to another level.
Prayer is more than just talking with God. Prayer is how we access the power and promises He has provided for us, His children. There have been times when I have actually felt things break off of me while praying, when I’ve come out of my prayer closet feeling like a new person, leaving my fears, worries, and doubts at His feet.
I tell you these things to encourage you to pray, but if I only tell you this side of prayer—the victory and the power—I’m setting you up for failure. Why? Because as wonderful as those times are, they are only part of the story. Breakthrough doesn’t happen every time we pray. Those moments often come after days, weeks, even years of consistent prayer. Those times of breakthrough are sometimes the result of praying even when we don’t feel like it or want to, over and over again.
Because the truth is, prayer is hard work.
Both the New and Old Testaments commend the prophet Elijah as a man who prayed powerful prayers. His prayers were so powerful that he prayed it would not rain, and for three and a half years, no rain fell in Israel. Then, at the Lord’s command, he prayed again, and the rain fell. Another time, he prayed and fire fell from heaven and consumed the sacrifice offered on a water-soaked altar.
The story only tells us about the events of that particular day. Elijah prayed. Fire fell. But you can be sure that wasn’t the first time Elijah had prayed.
Prayer is like that. Often, the answers seem sudden to those who see the results, but there is almost always someone behind the scenes who has been praying for a long time.
Prayer Exposes Our Own Heart
Prayer requires us to come before the Lord. He is light, and when we draw near to Him, all that is in our heart and mind is made visible.
Often, we struggle to come to the Lord in prayer because of the issues we have hidden in our own hearts. We can’t compartmentalize the issues of our hearts and our prayers. When we come to the Lord in prayer, we must trust that He accepts us as we are while also allowing the Holy Spirit to do a work in our hearts.
This is not easy.
Remember what Adam and Eve did in the garden when they knew they had sinned? They hid from God. That’s what we often try to do when we know we have unsettled business with God. But if we are going to become women of prayer—women who pray for our families, friends, communities, and churches—we must learn to run to God and not from Him, especially when we have heart issues that try to drive us from His presence.
Build a Prayer Life—One Day at a Time
As a young Christian in my 20s, I had women who had been serving God longer than I had been alive teaching me the importance of daily prayer. They told me to make it a nonnegotiable. Pray every day. It’s our lifeline with God.
But I wasn’t sure how to start.
Do I start on my knees? Do I start by reading the Bible? Do I start with worship music or a hymn?
I’ve since learned that the best way to start is just to start.
Someone suggested I begin with a good daily devotional, and that really helped. Over the years, I’ve used many devotionals to help me kick-start my quiet times with the Lord. A short Scripture, an insightful passage, maybe a short prayer—devotionals can help us focus our hearts and minds on Jesus.
I love them so much that I even wrote one to help other women have their own quiet times with the Lord: Seek First: 31 Quiet Moments with Jesus.
Devotionals are great tools to help you get started with prayer. But sometimes the image we give others regarding quiet time with Jesus—including beautiful devotional books, soft worship music, and warm candles burning—can give the impression that prayer is always beautiful and joyful.
It’s not.
Sometimes it’s downright ugly.
Prayer Isn’t Always Pretty
When we bring real people with real problems before the Lord in prayer, we don’t usually see immediate answers. When we drag our own anxious hearts, fearful of exposure, before a holy God, we don’t always feel the worries and cares of the world fall away immediately.
But we come anyway.
We come by faith.
This is why prayer is sometimes described as wrestling with God. It takes commitment, determination, and faith.
There is a “pressing in” that must happen in prayer. It’s often a fight to pray when nothing in us wants to. There will always be excuses to keep us from prayer. Doubt will always try to knock on our door. The enemy will continue to throw guilt and condemnation at us to keep us from approaching God. It’s one of his most effective tactics.
But we must remember that we are not drawing near to Jesus in our own righteousness or by our own works. We come because of the righteousness we have in Christ and because of His work on the cross.
That’s the only way we can come—by faith in who Jesus is and what He has done.
God May Be Working in Ways You Cannot See
Recently, my husband and I listened to an audiobook called Out of a Far Country by Christopher Yuan. It is a true story about Christopher and his mother, and it encouraged my faith in prayer so much.
Their family was atheist. They experienced a family crisis that led his mother to consider taking her own life. But before doing so, she wanted to see her son Christopher one last time. She bought a one-way train ticket to visit him in college a few states away.
On the train ride, God spoke to her. She had a life-changing experience with God, so she sought out others who could help her understand what had happened to her. In the process, she became a born-again Christian and began praying for her family. Over the next several years, her father and husband became Christians as well.
But if you had looked at her son’s life while she was praying, it would not necessarily have looked as though her prayers were being answered.
Christopher’s life seemed to be getting worse, not better. He was kicked out of dentistry school. He struggled with drug addiction, became a drug dealer, and eventually went to prison.
Imagine being his mother and watching all of that unfold while you are praying.
From her perspective, it may have appeared that everything was getting worse.
But God was working in ways she could not see.
Eventually, through circumstances she could never have orchestrated herself, Christopher came to faith in Christ.
She couldn’t see the whole story while she was praying.
Neither can we.
We see the little piece of the puzzle that is right in front of us today, but God sees the entire picture. We don’t know what He is doing behind the scenes, what He is working in someone’s heart, what He is preparing, or how He may use the circumstances we wish He would change immediately.
That doesn’t mean every difficult circumstance will turn out the way we hope. But it does mean that we can trust the God who sees what we cannot see.
Don’t Give Up on Prayer
If prayer has been difficult for you lately, I want to encourage you not to interpret that difficulty as failure.
Your prayer life doesn’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to come to God with the right words or the right feelings. You don’t have to understand everything that is happening before you are allowed to bring it to Him.
Just come.
Bring your frustration. Bring your disappointment. Bring the questions you don’t know how to answer. Bring the person you have been praying for over and over again. Bring the circumstance that hasn’t changed. Bring the part of your own heart that you wish were different.
And then keep coming.
Don’t run from God because you are struggling. Run to Him.
Prayer may be messy. It may be uncomfortable. It may sometimes feel like wrestling. There may be days when you pray and get up feeling exactly as troubled as you did when you knelt down.
But that doesn’t mean God wasn’t there.
Prayer is where we remind ourselves that He is God and we are not. It is where we surrender our desire to control the outcome and say, “Lord, not my will, but Yours be done.” It is where we learn to trust Him with the people and circumstances we cannot control.
And somewhere in that process, while we are asking God to change the situation, He begins changing us.
Perhaps one day we will look back and be thankful for the answer to the prayer we prayed for so long. But we may also discover that we are thankful for something else: God was doing a work in us while we were waiting for Him to do a work around us.
So if prayer feels hard right now, don’t give up. Keep showing up, even if you don’t have the words, even if you don’t feel anything, and even if you don’t understand what God is doing.
You don’t have to make your prayer time beautiful for God. You simply have to bring yourself before Him.
He sees you. He knows what you are carrying. He knows what you cannot put into words, and He knows the whole story when you can only see a small piece of it.
If you found this article helpful and you’d like to say thanks, click here to buy Audrey a coffee.
