Well, we thank you for joining us again on our Struggling Well podcast. And just as a information point. You hear Suz's voice and my voice a lot, but there's a third voice you hear on our recordings, and that's the voice of Tim Briggs, who is a local pastor here in Charlotte of a church called Steadfast Church. But more than that, Tim is a friend, and he also is the production guru behind this. So, if it wasn't for Tim, we would not be able to produce these things.
Thank you, Tim. We also want to give a little shout out to we have to our grandkids. We have a bunch of grandkids and several of them have subscribed to our podcast. And these are kids that are like in elementary school. The ones I think that have subscribed. The older ones are busy with their lives. We get that. But one of our grandkids in particular gave us a fivestar rating, which we love. So, thank you, Jub. We love you.
Yeah. And I don't know, maybe the only five-star rating in the history of struggling. Well, we're we talk about the things we struggle with and I and I'm, you know, I've been a believer since I was seven and I'm now approaching my 69th birthday. So that's a six decades of that. And one of the places I've always found myself struggling in the Christian life is with prayer. it's at times not made sense to me, at times I found myself not wanting to pray and yet knowing that's what we're supposed to do. And I've talked about that in sermons in the past. And I think well-meaning, well-intentioned churchgoers could solve it for me if I would just listen to their methods of seeing prayer work. But I don't think I'm alone in the struggle with prayer. It at times is hard to understand this all- knowing, all powerful God. What do my prayers do?
Well, I think that we all wonder that. and so much of it, I think, babe, comes from the grid of your religious background, your faith background. I came from a denomination where prayers were much more lurggical and praying felt wrote when I was younger. Now I've come to really enjoy the prayers of the Puritans and other people other people's written prayers. but I think when we pray we're afraid that it's just hitting the roof the ceiling even and not going anywhere.
Yeah. I mean again our different backgrounds growing up but in my background a written prayer was an
anathema. prayed from your heart. And so number of years ago, a friend of mine gave me a book called The Valley of Vision, which is a collection of Puritan prayers. And at first, I thought, how could you find anything more boring than that? But as I got into it and read it, I found myself deeply moved by these saints of old who went to the throne of God with their prayers. The other struggle for me though, Suzi, is I think sometimes we turn the things we desire into demands.
and again, I think some of that comes out of the church culture that I've been a part of. where it feels like at times we feel like we're going to gang up on God.
Yeah.
You know, we're going to have an all night prayer meeting. Why? Well, we're going to we're going to kind of force God's hand or we're going to do an unbroken prayer chain for 5 days or whatever it may be. and in that it feels like we're saying to God, you've got to do this because look at how many of us are praying. And I don't think that's what scripture teaches.
You know, lately I've in listening to people as they pray myself especially and realizing that a lot of times when I pray what I'm doing is I'm telling God what like you said demand I'm telling him what I want him to do and it's really not about I'm not really worshiping him or even acknowledging who he is I'm just trying to tell him what I want and sometimes if I if I'm real tearful and wrestling in a hard way that feels like for sure God's going to hear this because my heart is broken and He needs to pay attention to that.
Yeah. And you mix into all of that this sense that I don't know that we realize the promises of God are very few and sometimes our prayers turn into what we want and think that God has promised that to us but he really hasn't. CS Lewis one of the guys that I just obviously love his writings when and he married Joy after being a bachelor for years and she developed cancer and ultimately died and the struggles that Lewis had with faith in God in that and he said this to a friend he said I pray because I can't help myself I pray because I am helpless I pray because the need flows out of me all the time waking and sleeping it doesn't change God it changes me
yeah
and that to me is the idea that I want to pray according to his will. Not according to my will, but according to his will. And that's many times where I find myself up against the struggle. I know what I want.
Yeah.
And that's not something he's necessarily promised.
And if I can be honest here, I probably in the last four years have come through a season where I struggled to pray for a couple of reasons. One, it was like, you know, that feeling of why bother? I mean, is he going to do anything,
right?
But the other was my plans got thwarted. My hurt was deep. And so I just kind of gave for whatever reason I gave God the cold shoulder and I just I talked about him. I complained or to others about what was going on in my life, but I didn't really go vertical. It was a lot of horizontal praying and you know just right here where I was talking about it, but I wasn't really calling on him as God with all of his characteristics that are unchangeable. I just got mad. I just got angry and I thought, well, I'm just going to, you know, forget it, God. You didn't respond the way I thought you should respond. Don't you know that my heart has been turned towards you? It feels like you've turned your heart away from me.
Yeah. And I think the key word that you said in all that you just said is my plans.
Yeah.
you know, I think about Christ in the garden when he facing the reality of the cross and he cries out to the father with his desire if there's any way that this cup could pass from me. That's that was his desire. But then he says, "But not my will, but your will be done." And that to me is a poignant reminder that so many times it is about my plans, my desires, and not yielding to what he wants and wanting his will.
And there's so many prayers in scripture that we can refer to. And I've spent a great amount of time in the Psalms and the Psalms of Lament in particular and just want to read to you bits out of Psalm 77 because it's a bad day for the psalmist. Not just a bad day, it's a bad season. Hugely bad. And he says in Psalm 77, I cry aloud to the Lord. If I cry aloud, he'll hear me. In the day of my trouble, I seek the Lord. But then he says, my soul refuses to be comforted when I remember God. I moan when I meditate, my spirit faints. let me remember my song in the night. Let me meditate in my heart. so the psalmist is being very raw there. And the psalms of lament are they're very full of raw emotion, but he's saying what we feel so much, but we're even afraid to say that is God, I'm crying out loud to you. Hear me. Does the psalmist think because he's crying loudly that God's going to hear him? I don't know. But he says in the day of trouble, I'm seeking you. My hand is stretched out toward you. But then he says, "My soul refuses to be comforted." And often times in my prayer, because I'm telling God what I want and how he should act, I leave my time of prayer not feeling comforted.
Yeah. I think what we would want you all to hear and we leave with you today is this that never stop praying. at the same time recogn ize that the cry of our hearts out to God doesn't mean that God is going to do what we want him to do. He's going to do what he wants to do. But the privilege that we have to go to the almighty God of the universe and pray and to know this that he hears us, I think that's something that is worth wrestling with and we hope that you will.
Thanks for joining us. To learn more about the Struggling Well podcast, visit Andomspirituality. com