Always Pray

I talk too much.

I talk too much and act too little. I was in a group, asking for prayer about something close to my heart, and when someone asked me if I had been praying about it, I said, sort of, but not really. He told me, "What have you been doing? This is a serious topic, so get serious about prayer."

That's really the truth. I talk too much about how important prayer is, or how much I need prayer, but when it comes down to it, I'm not really serious about what I say, or else I would do something about it.

I wasn't serious about prayer. I would say the words, and the issues I would pray about would be important to me, but I wasn't serious about the words I would say. It was like they were dead--like I didn't really expect anyone to hear them. Kind of like I was just fulfilling a duty by saying the words--that God would hear anyway, I just told people I would pray for things here and there, so that's why I had to actually say them.

Lately, I've come to learn more about the difference between saying the words, and really praying. I'm serious about prayer nowadays--I believe that God is listening, I believe that I am pleading with God, and I believe that what I do is important and absolutely necessary, because I realize that I need to pray. Nowadays, prayer is all that I can do. I pray for God to help me, to fill my heart, and to teach me His comfort and His love. And I think that when we pray seriously, we come to a better understanding of all the things that we cannot do.

I used to think that I could force myself to do quite a few things, and it seems like I can. But somehow, praying about those same things makes me realize that I actually can't, and actually don't want to. The truth is that I can pretend to be able to do things--pretend to be strong. I can force myself to move on, live life.

But nowadays, when I pray, I pray with desperation. Because unless God makes things real to me, unless He makes Himself real to me, there is absolutely nothing I can do except pretend and try my best to live my life, but that's not real. Only God can truly save, and that's the reason why I pray.