Gò0dNews for Everyone
Prayer Exhaustion
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by Eddie Turner
here are people around us whose passion in life is
unexciting. And the blessings we ask for serve as annoying
talking to God. With wonderfully creative words
delays before meals. Despite being a very creative person,
and vibrant articulation, we call these people
I was not injecting any creativity into my prayers. And
prayer warriors. As we listen to their powerful pleas to
I rarely talked to God about anything exciting the way I
our King, we are often reminded of our own prayer life,
would with others. If this hits home with you, here are a
which can be…let’s face it, quite dull in comparison. Lulls
few things you can do to try and shake things up.
in the frequency of our prayers, however, are not always due to us being poor communicators. Sometimes, we just flat-out don’t want to pray. I have experienced this in my own prayer life. There was a time when I would dive into my Facebook feed each morning in search of prayer requests that I could respond to. Eventually, I found myself skipping over those that I had prayed for already or whose requests I felt were unworthy of my time. This was horrible, I know. But it’s how my flawed human heart reacted to what is often called prayer exhaustion. What I was once eager to do, I had begun to dread. Here’s an example of how this can happen. For the men, imagine committing to bringing home a red rose
1. Tell God about random things that are going on in your life.
for your wife every day. This is a wonderful gesture
2. Tell Him about something He created that you admire.
that I’m sure would earn loads of brownie points—for a
3. Sing to God one of your favorite praise or worship songs.
while anyway. Now imagine pulling into your driveway
4. Ask God to increase your heart’s capacity to love Him
and then having to turn around and go back to the store
and those around you.
because you forgot to stop on your way home. How happy
I could go on and on, but you get the picture. In the
would you be buying your wife a rose on that day? What if
Bible, we are told to pray without ceasing and to sing a
you were hurrying home to see the kick-off of the football
new song for His glory. Take a moment each day before
game you’ve been excited about all week? Would you be
you sit down to pray and think of something new to talk
as pleased to stop on your way? These things will happen.
to God about. As God sees the effort you make, He may
And as your heart becomes increasingly unattached, so
lift your spirits and provide you with new opportunities to
will your wife’s appreciation for the gesture.
share your love for Him with others. After all, if we’re not
When we treat our prayers like fill-in-the-blank forms and recite the same format over and over, praying becomes
48 // December 2021
excited to talk to Him, how excited can we be to tell others about Him?
