My Prayer Journey

I grew up in a Christian school that stressed head knowledge and gave very little in terms of tools for discipleship. So when my prayer life consisted of falling asleep while laying in bed, mind drifting between other thoughts and sleep and not quite remembering what was prayed by the time I woke up, I felt shame. I had a terrible prayer life. I never considered, however, that I didn’t know how to pray. Prayer is supposed to be self-explanatory (and to an extent it is), but I was lacking its fullness, transforming power, and intimacy. I didn’t know how to temper my wandering mind and have a flourishing prayer life. 

I was in 11th grade when I discovered prayer journaling, but without tools for how to start, my mind focused on the abyss, on the pressure, and I was left writing rote prayer requests—a good habit but one that could not sustain my prayer life. I picked up that prayer journal now and then over the next several years with no greater consistency than a weekly prayer journal which lasted only a handful of weeks into my collegiate junior year. That same year my job had weekly meetings that required we pray as a group out loud over a specific person each time. As always when it came to audible prayer, I was an anxious mess, dreading my turn, tripping over my words, and commiserating with a friend afterwards as we blocked out the details. 

Early in my freshman year of college, a friend took a group of us to a prayer meeting. I didn’t know what to expect. The lights were low, worship music played softly, and a small group of people spread out on chairs and the floor praying and worshiping to themselves. The host slowly and quietly made his way across the room, stopping by each person and whispering prayers over them. One of the things he prayed over me mentioned my prayer ministry. I don’t remember the context or the details; “prayer ministry” is what I have written on my notes, and for a girl that couldn’t stay awake long enough to get through a prayer, they didn’t make much sense. They felt like a farce at best and much more likely like an impossibility. 

But time goes on. 

When I graduated college, I finally gained some consistency in my prayer journals. Every week after church I’d cozy up on a couch and go to God. The time spent there was consistently longer than I ever would’ve imagined even a couple years prior. And I saw the value journaling my prayers had for allowing me not only to balance my distractions but also to follow different pathways of prayer while still being able to return to my main focus. 

A couple years later someone held me accountable to spending 4 out of 7 days a week praying for 45 minutes for a few weeks. And though the method of prayer that worked best for me took most of that time to figure out, it created a habit that has been one of the greatest gifts of my life. 

Not only did that time teach me how to pray and grow my intimacy with God, but it also taught me to celebrate praying even when I didn’t want to, when I had “nothing to say,” and when my prayer time ended feeling just as lifeless as when it began. God worked through it all, and His presence was never determined by my feelings or awareness of it. 

God made me a woman of prayer, not through my doing but through His provision. 

About a year ago, I decided to take things a step further. My church started a Prayer Team, and I was asked to join. I thought that this could be my opportunity to move my prayer ministry from a solely private to public basis. I stepped out in faith, and it went . . . terribly. I had always been anxious to pray aloud, and no matter how much my prayer life had grown, all I could think when I prayed was about how I needed to be encouraging and cover the person and address everything and pray long enough for them to feel cared for. My intentions were good, but they relied on self and left me an anxious, striving mess. 

I joined Prayer Team in March. Almost a year later in February, God taught me how to pray. 

I was sitting at home on a Saturday night, distracting myself from bad news that I wasn't prepared to process. And that is the only reason why when a message came through that my pastors were hosting an early morning prayer meeting before church, I said yes. And just to put things in perspective, we're talking pre-sunrise, and I am not a morning person. But somehow I got up that first day through Christ alone and kept coming back. By. The. Grace. Of. God.

That first morning started with individual prayer time that was exactly what my spirit needed and was so life-giving. I had a moment of panic when we moved to pray over someone, but I was able to repurpose my individual prayer well enough as a blessing over her. By the time my pastor closed us and we all stood to leave, I was feeling pretty good about the whole affair. 

And then one member of our small group stopped a couple of us on the way out. He had a Bible verse come to mind that he wanted to share. We gathered around him, he shared, it was nice. But then he prayed. And then the person beside him prayed. And by the time the next person prayed, I knew the circle was continuing and it was about to turn to me. I searched my mind for something to say, but I had nothing on my heart, so I prayed for God's help. And then out of nowhere, a need, a blessing, a prayer popped into my mind. I prayed not only with lots of relief but with peace . . . And then the circle of prayer continued. Around and around we went again and again and again, and each time we did, the Holy Spirit brought something to mind. By the time we were done, my anxiety had melted away and I was feeling a pretty big high with the Holy Spirit. The meetings continued, and though they didn't follow the same pattern necessarily, God had shown me throughout that first one that prayer is something to receive and not something to create. And whether I left a time of corporate prayer feeling God's goodness or wishing I could take a nap, the God who provides and fills stayed the same. The next time I prayed on my church Prayer Team, my prayer had so much more calmness, and instead of feeling my anxious heartbeat, I felt the joy and blessing of praying for someone else. 

I had joined Prayer Team as an act of faith and with a desire for God to use me and grow me. When my prayers felt like failure and filled with anxiety, I thought I had made the wrong choice. But even though it happened after I stepped forward, God equipped me for the role I held. He gave me a training ground for corporate prayer, and He created the right circumstances for me to say yes and keep saying yes. 

In the same year, God decided to bless my prayer life again. Only this blessing I wasn't too keen on. 

I was at a retreat, listening to a teaching on prayer when someone asked a question on prayer languages. I had never heard anyone speak in tongues, and although I did not think it was necessary for salvation, it's a spiritual gift I've always believed in, so I listened thoughtfully. But when the speaker shared his story of God blessing him with tongues, how he was the one blocking the outpouring God had for him, I felt my tongue loosen. For the first time in my life I wondered if God would give me the gift of tongues, and in that moment, I knew that I didn't want it. I didn't want something I didn't understand. I didn't want something I couldn't control. I didn't want something that I had no way of measuring if I was doing correctly. 

But I also didn't want to say no to a gift God had for me. 

I tried to make myself open, but I couldn't do it on my own. Thankfully, God is always faithful, and He brought two people to pray faithfully with and over me in what was a very tedious, uncomfortable, and beautiful experience that I will always be blessed by.

The very circumstances required me to receive from them, required me to be in the center of attention as they interceded on my behalf, required me to risk getting it wrong in front of people.

You would not believe how arduous receiving can be.

But God did not rescind the gift because I was resistant. Instead, He had one of the people praying over me deliver this message: "Fear not for I am with you." Instead, He gave me people who were willing to pour out over me and to pray through each movement of my tongue and each pitiful syllable getting stuck on my lips. People who could have been headed home after a long retreat but chose to be with me, helping me to receive God's gifts. Through these people He gave me not only the blessing of time and presence but also the tools I needed to practice receiving it when they were no longer there and a chance to process with someone on the ride home as He continued to familiarize me with the idea. And that evening, after repetition of each truncated sound to the melody of the song God had placed on my heart that weekend, He beat down my resistance and His mercies flowed over me. 

And as I celebrated His goodness with those around me, I had the privilege of hearing other people's perspectives and experiences, drawing into conversations on a sometimes controversial gift and a topic I'd rarely discussed. I even learned that my great-grandmother had prayed for this very gift to assure her of her salvation, and yet God gave me the fruit of her prayers after He had already assured me that I am His. Instead of living in the security of my gift, I got to bask in the blessing of it while living in the security of my God. 

But it all started with God's prompting, my resistance, and His patient and faithful pursuit. 

And what I see looking back over the years is that the resistance that was true towards this particular gift was also true of my prayer life as a whole.

For so long I came to God with my striving. I wanted to be a good Christian, doing the right things and going to the God I fully believed in. I wanted to prove to God that I loved Him and abate the doubts I had for my salvation. Only in my adulthood did I truly learn prayer as a place of intimacy and relationship. I had years of self-reliance built up from a spiritually insecure faith, and even when I genuinely wanted to do what was good, pleasing, and upright, I always put the onus on myself. I prayed for years for God to make me a vessel, but I was often trying to pour out without first receiving. 

A prayer language—speaking words I don’t know—is a great reminder that all I can do is receive. That has to be the baseline of everything I do. Life-giving faith is only born out of receiving Life Himself. And praying in tongues kept this lesson God has been so faithful to teach me at the forefront. I literally cannot do it on my own. I don't know how to make the sounds, what they are, or what they mean. In those first few days, I kept testing it out because while I trusted what God was doing, it didn't make sense to me that I could talk without first thinking what I would say. And yet my mind never formed the syllables before they left my lips. I had to rely on God every time. And though I'm still trying to figure out the place of this gift in my prayer life (and somehow I forget about it at times), I'm thankful that God's gifts are never dependent on my ability to receive but on His ability to give. I'm thankful that the work is not my own but His. I'm thankful that He always invites me in and that He is patient, kind, and gentle as He strips down my barriers and leads me into receiving. And that's true of all forms of prayer.

After years and years of "failing" at prayer, it's so beautiful to see how God has moved in my prayer life. To bear this testimony to His goodness. I see Him cultivating prayer in my heart and drawing me deeper into intimacy with Him. And at its core, I see Him redefining prayer from my childhood definition of a spiritual discipline that we were supposed to do to an intimate opportunity to draw into relationship with the God who created me, receiving His insights, corrections, and unchanging love, knowing Him more and being known in return. 

I don't know all the ways God will work in my prayer life, but I'm so thankful for the work that He is doing and this love He's given me for prayer. And as He continues to grow me, I see His faithfulness and I know that the best is yet to come.