I’m tired of praying

We’ve all been there. That grey place sandwiched between the last vestiges of hope and hopelessness, masquerading as fatigue. That place where we think, I’m praying but my prayers have no effect whatsoever. I’m praying all the time but despite my fervent commitment to this prayer thing, nothing is happening! Inevitably the dire thoughts give way to a prayer-less life as we throw in the towel and slumber in defeat. After all, if God can hear us, why do we have to pray so much and for so long?

In the journey of life, there often seems to be a sense of unfairness particularly when we slip into comparing our situations against those of others. I call that the “woe is me” syndrome. This ailment typically manifests as a looking over the shoulder or scanning our surroundings to see how things happened for other people. Particularly for single ladies, this happens often in the area of marriage. “How comes things seem to open up so easily for all my friends? It was as though they just floated into marriage, no trauma no drama nothing” is a question I am often asked. This usually comes after a session in which I am standing in prayer and agreement with a woman who for all intents and purposes has given up on prayer. “Why does it have to be so hard for me? Why do I have to fight so hard? Why must I contend if God can hear me surely. Does He actually hear me at all?”

Now, I understand exactly where these women are coming from. It seems like a bitter pill to swallow to imagine that you pray day in day out, consistently file your petitions before the courts of heaven and yet you have nothing to show for it. Or so you think. This is where I urge every woman in this position to open the eyes of her spirit and approach this matter not from a physical/natural perspective but through spiritual lenses. First, we must accept that we are spirit beings encased in a human body. Now some of you may not find that concept strange, but for others it may be a bit of an enigma. If you fall in the latter category, I ask you please do not skim over this bit : say it out loud. You are a spirit encased in a human body. Your human form gives you the legal right to operate in and occupy this earth in accordance with the laws and principles of our Father, the great I Am.

Why is that such an important truth to come to grips with? It is important to accept this because it enables us to shift our perspective and stop thinking from earth unto heaven, rather we reverse it so that we see things as from heaven unto earth. Essentially, think of prayer in spiritual terms. Though our eyes may not see what goes on in the spirit realm, our prayers are a weapon and they shift things in the spirit. We must believe that for it is the truth! It starts with a little tremor at first, then a fault line which morphs into a great big earthquake. Finally a seismic shift - otherwise known as our breakthrough - occurs as our prayers accomplish the purpose for which they were lifted up to heaven.

It is so dangerous to live a life of prayerlessness, I cannot emphasise this enough. I’m speaking purely from personal perspective here but as a woman, I think of myself as a spiritual gate. If I stand on my rampart, take my position on my watch tower and watch to see, I have every faith that I will see. I will see the strategies that the enemy is deploying against me and those around me. I will see the areas where he is causing me to stumble, or where he is creating discouragement and deception. Where he’s trying to attack my mind with negative thoughts with the ultimate goal of shaking my faith and causing me to give up on prayer, or God forbid give up altogether! The intention here is of course to hack our direct channels of communication with God so the enemy can run rampart doing whatever he can to steal, kill and destroy our destinies. And when I see, what will I do? I will pray! I will pray, I will intercede, I will partner with God and the angelic realm to see that my Father’s will for my life and the lives of those around me is done here on earth as it is in heaven. As I pray, I will have the added advantage that my prayers will be highly strategic based on what my Father showed me as I stood on my watchtower. Do you see why you cannot give up and say you can’t pray, you’re tired of praying? It is really really dangerous. In the realm of the spirit, a home without a gate and a gatekeeper is real estate for anyone and anything to enter and do as they wish. So basically if you desire to become an experiment in the spiritual realm then by all means, stop praying. Tough to hear, I know, but so very true.

A wise woman once told me to think of prayer as a savings bank. I’m sure many of us have heard this before. The saying goes, pray now while you can, keep pressing in and imagine that each time you pray, you are building up savings in your bank for a rainy day. The idea is essentially that should the vicissitudes of life come rearing their ugly head, you can always draw from your prayer bank when you feel you have not the strength to travail. When she said that, I shouted “I will pray!” In Nigerian pidgin, “I go pray, very well!”

Let me pause here to encourage those of us that truly feel they have done everything they know to do in the prayer closet and yet they have not seen results, particularly in the area of deliverance. I would ask you to employ the theatre of your mind here and picture two glasses. One glass is filled to the brim with Coca Cola (this represents darkness and the undesirable things you are praying out of your life) and the other is filled with water (the blinding light of God). Each time you pray, you are spilling water (the light of God) into the glass of Coke (the wiles of the Kingdom of darkness). As you continue to pray, the Coke turns lighter in colour as the dark liquid spills out and what’s left in the glass is diluted, but this takes some time. Guess what, it may even take two or three glasses of water before the liquid runs as clear as the water but the fact is, it does happen eventually! In the same way, our prayers fill us with the light of God and shine our Father’s brilliance into the dark areas of our lives. Areas of stagnation, delay, where deliverance is sought, areas of hopelessness and fear. Unfortunately, what do most of us do? Thinking about it, it’s a travesty really! We start to run the race well. We dilute the Coke faithfully for a period of time, only to stop halfway through, just as the real results were starting to show! Did you know that our prayers strengthen the angels assigned over our lives as God releases our blessings to bring them to speedy fruition? Why then would you stop praying, woman? Pray and pray without ceasing, it is our greatest weapon. No wonder the enemy targets our prayer life, for if he can just make us lazy in that arena, make us believe the lie that God doesn’t hear us or is not in the business of answering our prayers (a big fat lie, I’ll have you know!) then he has won the battle. The rest is a walk in the park for him.

For those sisters who are are truly at the end of the tether and genuinely feel too tired or weakened in the spirit to pray, what do you do? Write down your prayers, read them out loud daily. To be honest you can even read them silently, but at least then you know you’re doing your part and you can trust that God will do the rest.

So I ask you today, daughter of the Most High. Will you get up and fight in prayer, contend for that which is rightly yours? Or will you give up and let go of the beautiful storerooms of great treasures God has for you in heaven? Will you accept that even though you cannot see the results today, things are surely shifting in the spirit and that when you pray, you are partnering with heaven to bring the will of our Father to pass here on earth? Can you accept that God hears you clearly and all He is asking you to do is pray, travail and He Himself, the Lord of heaven’s armies will do the heavy lifting for you? I pray you can accept these truths today. More than anything, I hope this piece awakens the prayer warrior in us all. That we may learn to stand up and fight, despite what it looks like. The battle continues and we, daughters of Zion, shall prevail in the mighty name of Jesus.