How Do You Pray?

Coming into the final semester for my senior year of college, I was overwhelmed with the stresses and responsibilities of graduating. While I am fully aware of the success rate of the billions of people that have graduated college before me, let me also point out that I am facing a lot of the same questions, doubts, anxieties and realities that they too have had to face.

I’ve spent a considerable amount of time in prayer lately asking God to provide for me, to lead me to the right job, to know the right path to take, and to open the right doors for me. But the last few days the Lord has been stirring something new in me.

As mentioned in my previous posts, I had a difficult summer in which I regularly had to wrestle a lot of my core fears. Each day I would write out my fears and match each one to a promise the Lord had given me. Because it worked so well I had decided to do something similar as I walked through this season leading up to graduation. I’d only been working through this process for about a week when the Lord showed me that I was praying the wrong prayers.

Let me make a side note here and explain what I mean by the wrong prayers. It wasn’t that I was wrong for praying, or even for praying those prayers. Rather, by praying those prayers I was opening up the conversation for the Lord to direct me in this season. And in doing so, he changed my perspective on how to pray.

He has promised to provide for me. He has promised me that He is good. He has proven to me His faithfulness, and I know His character to be everlasting. Still, I was anxious. So rather than praying and reminding Him of all of His promises to me, He asked me to pray that I would let Him teach me how to rely on Him. It’s not an issue of whether or not I will be provided for. It’s an issue of whether or not I will wait patiently on Him and His timing. It’s not an issue of His faithfulness, but rather my trusting in His faithfulness.

The issue is not Him, it’s me. The question is not, “Will He provide?” but rather, “Do I have what it takes to let Him?”

It’s a scary place. And it’s a very real question. What if I still don’t know what I’m doing by graduation? What if things don’t pan out the way I truly desire them to? What if things look differently than I thought they would? What if they aren’t everything I imagined or dreamed?

Like most things of value, this requires not a solitary decision but a process filled with millions of momentary decisions. It’s choosing His peace over my anxiety, releasing control and RESTING in the fact that it is not in my hands.

I’m not suggesting that we should no longer ask God to provide for us. To my friend with cancer, she should continue praying for healing. To the family member seeking restoration with a loved one, continue asking. Keep praying for the salvation of your close friend or family member. Continue asking Him to lead and guide you and to make your path clear before you. But consider also the prayer of patience for His timing. Consider what it would look like for Him to answer your prayers in His way instead of our own.

Remember that He transcends our logic, our timelines, our concepts of goodness and what is best. He IS wisdom. He IS provision. He IS goodness. He IS what is best. The only remaining question: Do we have what it takes to let Him be these things?