Changing the Focus of My Prayers

God has been speaking to me lately about prayer.  One of the ways I can tell that God is speaking to me, is through repetition.  Whenever I start to notice that the same topic is coming up in multiple ways and times in my day, I stop and ask God what it is He is trying to get me to see.

Over the past couple of weeks,  I have had people ask why they don’t see God’s answers when they are praying so fervently and sincerely.  In my Bible study time, I have been reading about the importance of personal prayer as well as corporate prayer.  And even in our Life Group meetings, the topic has been prayer more than once.  So, I asked God, what it is about prayer that He wants me to understand. He showed me that it isn’t about praying the right prayers.  It’s all about the focus of my prayers.

When I pray, I tend to ask Him to help me do well in whatever I am working on.  I ask Him to show me how to do my job better, or how to be a better wife and mother.  I ask Him to be with me when I have a difficult task to do.  I ask Him to go before me and make everything go smoothly. Basically, I ask Him to help me live my life.  

He doesn’t want to help me live my life.  He wants me to ask Him what life He wants me to live.  Rather than making my plans and asking Him to bless them, I need to be searching out His plans and asking what my part is in them.  

I mentioned at a past meeting that I have been feeling overwhelmed and unsure of my ability to do everything I have been given to do. I had been asking for help to do all the things, or for some of the things to go away.  What I should have been asking was whether or not these were the things that He wanted me to be doing.  If I know that I am called to do all the things, then I can ask Him how He wants me to do them, and how I can do all of them well.  If He reveals to me that I’m not supposed to be doing all the things, I can ask Him how I transition out of them so that the person He has called to do them can step into their purpose – and I can get out of their way. 

I don’t know if you have been feeling overwhelmed or confused about your prayers, but if you have, I hope this helps.  It certainly helped me change my focus.