Praying When You Don’t Know What Else to Pray

Bible

I’ve been there.

I know what it’s like to pray for someone for so long that you feel like you’re praying the same thing over and over.

I am absolutely convinced that God hears us when we pray.  I am also absolutely convinced that He knows our heart even when we don’t know what to pray.

There are those that are most dear to me that I pray for often and others that I pray for when God brings them to my mind.  Some I have lifted up in prayer for so long, that it seems my prayer is repetitive, but still I persist.

In my heart I know that prayer isn’t about changing God’s mind or convincing Him of the value of someone or something.  God LOVES the very people I am praying for and His desire is that they would love and follow Him–He gives them the freedom to choose.  Prayer is really about agreeing with God (about sin and righteousness), looking to Him for direction (not my will, but His), and asking Him to awaken us to His presence (show me how to live!).

I love this verse for several reasons, and choose to pray it often:

“For this reason I kneel before the Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.  I pray that He may grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power in the inner man through His Spirit, and that the Messiah may dwell in your hearts through faith. I pray that you, being rooted and firmly established in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God’s love, and to know the Messiah’s love that surpasses knowledge, so you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to Him who is able to do above and beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us— to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”

Ephesians 3:14-21

I don’t know why we do it, but we sometimes we say, “All I can do now is pray…”

The truth is, that’s the best thing we can do.  Give it to God.  Give them to God.

Today is a day of confession for me.  There are so many of you that desperately need to feel loved, and sometimes this is the only way I know how to show it: through prayer.  So that’s what I’m doing.  I’m praying for you today.  As many of you that come to my mind today, I’m praying for you.  I’m praying this prayer from Ephesians, and I’m asking God to reveal Himself to you today.  Some of you know who you are, others may not, but my God does.