When I was a little girl, there was a war happening in Rwanda. The year was 1994 and around 800,000 people from the Tutsi tribe were tragically murdered in a mass genocide. The crazy thing is, I didn’t know these details until I looked them up just now. I had a hazy memory of a war in Rwanda because praying for “Rwanda” had been part of my little-girl nighttime prayers every night during that year. I was 9 years old, and praying a list was the only way I knew how to pray.
God answers list prayers. Some of the most faithful prayer warriors I know pray from lists. But sometimes when ALL we do is pray from lists, we forget to pray in our own voice. We forget to see God as a live listener who is interested in hearing our current, live-streamed thoughts and feelings. The problem is, our live-streamed feelings aren’t always something we want people to tune into. They aren’t always something we’re proud to show God.
There was a season in my life when my prayers got ugly. My daughter had recently been diagnosed with two auto-immune diseases, my husband’s job security was in question due to budget cuts, and I was awaiting a badly-needed back surgery. I was in tremendous pain, and not just physically. My prayers were angry, sometimes even hateful. I was deeply ashamed of this, but my dad told me something in that season that has changed my prayers to this day: “Just keep talking to God. You can trust Him even with your anger. He can handle it.”
In Psalm 22:1, David is pretty upset. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish?” David wasn’t afraid to lay his frustration in front of God. I think He knew he could trust God to bring him around to the right place again. After all, it’s also David who said, “Search me, God, and know my heart…See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23-24). God loves us in our ugliest moments, then faithfully leads us back to a place of beauty.
This morning, I encourage you to pray in your own voice. What are you actually thinking and feeling in this moment? Share that with God. You don’t need to try and be fancy; you don’t even need to try to be good. Give Him yourself as you are now, and trust Him to take you where you need to go.