How is your prayer life? Is it improving day-by-day, or are you stuck right where you stand?
I always suggest to people that if they are struggling with their prayer life, or if they find themselves stuck in the same-old, same-old, to shake things up a bit. It is always a good thing to try out different prayer forms to get your creative and spiritual juices flowing once more. I believe that it often helps one to re-connect with their Creator and develop a deeper relationship with Christ.
Recently, I came upon a list of three things that everyone needs to have when they pray:
- Self-Knowledge: to truly know yourself is key. What is going on in my life, and how am I coping with it? Am I taking responsibility for my actions or am I blaming others for my own misfortunes? Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom. He who looks outside, dreams. He who looks inside, awakes.
- Acceptance of Your Weaknesses: I need to fully accept that things that I struggle with, including the things that I don’t do well. Have I accepted the fact that I am not good at everything and that it is alright to fail with grace? After all, God can turn your my weaknesses into my strengths.
- Total Acceptance of God: it is the faith and belief that God is forever present in my life, working through me and guiding me forward in everything that I do. It is a complete and total acceptance that I do not control my life and believing that God is guiding me where I need to go (and to be truly open to accepting that reality). What good is faith without trust? We can make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps.
If you’re anything like me, you’ll find these points to be truthful, yet not always easy to follow. I often struggle with accepting my weaknesses. I know that this is something that I need to pay constant attention to in my spiritual life. I need to get better at accepting the fact that I cannot always eliminate my weaknesses, but that I must learn to accept them, grow from them, and move on.
The problem always arises when we get stuck focusing on our weaknesses to the point that we cannot focus on anything else. We get stuck right were we are. It’s during those times when we need to reach out to God in prayer and ask for the strength to follow the Lord more closely so that we can push ourselves beyond our weaknesses into total acceptance of God in our lives. If we can truthfully accept that our God is present, guiding us every step of the way, we will encounter new avenues of spiritual growth and find ourselves in a deeper relationship with our loving Father. And that is exactly where we all should strive to be.
