Heart Work

Specific Prayer

 Lately my prayer life has been strange. I've been praying daily and being vulnerable, but something was still off in my connection. I haven't exactly been "excited" to pray. I'd talk to God, but there was no eagerness to present my requests, desires, hopes, and dreams. I'm not hesitating but instead I'm tossing a bunch of prayers in the air hoping that one of them would be answered. I listened to a podcast where the speaker quoted something along the lines of "praying vaguely is like shooting everywhere hoping that at least one target has been shot but also hitting all the wrong spots." Yeah, my prayers have been vague. It began to feel stagnant. 

Heal this person.
Give me clarity.
Help me be more intentional.
Bring open souls to study the Bible.

It's not bad if you pray like that, but at least in my heart I was staying vague on purpose. Sisters in New York would ask me to make my prayers more specific, "When do you want this answered by - days, weeks, months, this year? Give a little more detail." 
My heart was conflicted to pray specifically because I had thoughts like, Why should I pray specifically? Isn't that challenging God to answer my prayers how I want it? Why should God cater towards me? Isn't that prideful?

But as 1 John 5:13-15 puts it, 

"I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of Him."

This gives me the same vibes as Proverbs 37:4 "Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart." First we must truly understand the former to understand the latter.

Delight yourself in the Lord --> and He will give you the desires of your heart.

If we ask anything accord to His will ---> we know that we have what we asked of Him.

A separate blogpost would be needed to go deeply into what it means to "know what the will of God is.” I think to know what God’s will is is to have a true hunger and thirst for righteousness, walking closely in His word and living it out, and then we'll know the mind and heart of God. And honestly I don’t think I’m there yet. But notice how the verse says, “this is the confidence we have in approaching God!” Knowing His will is possible (1 Corinthians 2:16), God hears us, and our prayers are being answered. Obviously my vague prayers show that I'm not approaching God with confidence haha.

Mark 11:22-26

“Have faith in God,” Jesus answered. “Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.”

Right before this passage Jesus and his disciples pass by a fig tree Jesus cursed, and now it was withered from the roots. I love the fig tree passage because it caught me off guard to see Jesus suddenly curse a fig tree. This time it spoke differently to me. I am the withered fig tree. Me! My prayer life is dry and not producing fruit. Although I still pray and present my requests, I'm being the leafy fig tree with the appearance of being fruitful but in closer inspection had no fruit to pick. And eventually if this keeps up, I can be withered from the roots. I think it's so timely for the passage to transition to verses about prayer - have faith, have no doubt, whatever you ask for in prayer believe you have received it. Bold, courageous, audacious, and miraculous prayers.

Then I had another thought...The fig tree was not supposed to bear fruit "because it was not the season for figs" (Mark 11:13), yet Jesus went to check it out. He was disappointed to find no fruit. Well that's weird, Jesus, of course there would be no fruit! But if I'm going to relate it back to our spiritual life, it echoes the verse in 2 Timothy 4:2 "Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction." 

I'm kinda stretching it a bit, but these were just my thoughts lawl.
Like the fig tree, we can bear fruit despite it not being the season. Not to take 2 Timothy 4:2 out of context since Paul is writing to Timothy about preaching and not praying, but the idea of not waiting for the right time can be applicable. 

Perhaps there's doubt in our hearts since it's not the right season...

Now is not the right time...
Maybe in the future...
It'll take forever for this prayer to be answered!

Perhaps our prayers aren't bold because we think it's not the season to pray... 

Well, I don't need to pray for campus that much because it's summer break.
It's definitely not going to happen now, why pray for it?
Things are going well with this, I don't need to pray for it now.

May my faith increase when I am tempted to limit myself with waiting to be "in season." May my prayer life flourish and be consistent even when life is going "well." May I stop looking leafy green and actually be producing fruit. May I be ready in and out of season. May I have faith that moves mountains.

And James 4:3 mentions what I said in the beginning of the blogpost, what I fear my heart will be when I do pray specifically.

"You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions." 

There are more verses on prayer, but these few have been convicting me. Am I walking that closely to God to be able to say that I am confident that I'm asking in His will, that I am not doubting, and that I'm praying with a pure heart? 

Anyways, I was not planning on writing about scripture. I was just going to write a blogpost of my current specific prayers but I guess the Holy Spirit had other plans. Here are my some  prayers I usually pray for myself, but now turned into specific prayers.

Prayers I've been praying:

  • God to use me where He wants me
  • Family to be saved
  • Campus ministry
Specific prayers!
  • Clarity by this month on my career path (continuing ministry, staying on Guam, or looking for a totally new job)
  • My sister to meet my friends this month
  • Be in contact with certain people again and for them to come out to our events 

If you look at my "About Me" page on the bottom it says --
Current bold prayer: I'm not going back to New York until I see a baptism at home!!

Looking back...that prayer was a selfish one, like what James 4:3 warns about "asking wrongly."
I wanted to leave Guam, but I didn't want to return to New York without a story of a baptism. In my heart I wanted to lift myself up and say, "see what happened while I was gone," kinda thing. Don't get me wrong, I truly want people to be baptized into Christ, but intertwined in that prayer was this sort of Savior-complex, pride, and self-righteousness. Moments like this make me confident that God will reveal to us if our prayers are aligned with His will.

Where am I going with this blogpost? I don't know but most of my posts are just my thoughts and journal entries anyways. I'll probably update this post when I learn more about praying, praying specifically, and learning more about the verses I mentioned. But since I've been praying specifically I can tell my prayer life is different. Just recently I prayed for God to encourage me because I was discouraged to see so many people stop studying, dwindle out, and friends not hanging out with me. After that prayer I got to hangout with friends I haven't seen in awhile, some friends off-island texted me, and more. I didn't even need to chase after them, it was an answered prayer. I'm excited to see what God is going to do. He hears me. My eyes are peeled and my heart is waiting expectantly. I'm looking out for those miraculous, bold, courageous prayers being answered.






Angelina

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