Praying in the winter seasons of our faith
How do
you pray when you cannot pray? How do
you pray when it seems like God has let you down and you don’t trust him enough
to pray to Him? Or you have strayed away
from Him and, in your shame, feel that He does not want to listen to you? Or you are too spiritually exhausted or broken
or apathetic to pray?
The
beauty of the call to prayer we receive from our Lord is that there are even
prayers for the seasons when we cannot pray.
The Psalms are filled with such prayers (just do a google search for
“Psalms of lament), and they often take our own inability to pray and place it
inside the multitude of prayers of the believing community throughout history
(for starters, see Psalms 13, 42 and 88).
Some
ways to pray when we cannot pray:
Lord, I
don’t know if you are there and if you want to hear from me – but I am broken
and confused and _______; I am longing for an encouraging glimpse of any kind….
Lord, I
don’t love you; Lord, I don’t want to love you; but Lord, I do want to want to
love you (Annie Lamott).
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