Keep Praying

I've been praying... a lot. It's my new thing. My I'm-learning-how-prayer-really-works thing. My trusting-God-to-teach-me-something-new thing.

I pray before my children and husband wake up. I pray after they've all gone to sleep. I sit and talk to God and study scripture. There are moments when I feel so small and inconsequential and then other, bolder moments when I feel my prayers shouting into the very throne room of God.

Last week around midnight, I was feeling small. Little me. In my little closet. Wondering if my prayers mattered.

And there it was, that small obedience-urge. Telling me to listen to the still small voice and do exactly what it said. So I listened. I obeyed.

My obedience took me to a devotional book, a random page with the Holy Spirit prompting me to look at the key verse. And there it was shouting back to me from that Holy throne room in heaven, two small words:

Keep praying.
1 Thessalonians 5:17

With my heart swelling, I began to praise God and pray with all my might. In the darkness of my home, my little closet was the only room burning bright. 

Another obedience-urge told me to take myself, my prayer, and His Spirit and walk my house. 

So I began to walk. Whispering from room to room. In shouted whispers His Name, His protection. Pleading the blood of Jesus over each space and over each inhabitant of our little house on Shadowbrook. As I prayed my arms moved, stretched to heaven in praise, touching walls, imbibing them with God's Holy presence, claiming my home and my family for the Lord.

I reached the front door and touched the top, running my hand over the 100 year-old oak. We have been passed over. We are covered in the Blood.

I circle back to my hallway. I make my way around a door. 

A figure approaches me in the darkness....the figure gasps, startled with fright.

My poor husband. In his jammies. Sleepy-eyed. Hair askew. Jennifer...what are you doing?

Obviously, I'm prayer walking through our house and claiming the Blood of Jesus, husband.

And with his knowledge of the Jesus-obsessed wife he married 12 years ago, he grunts, and returns to bed.

Because. Obviously that's what I'm doing. Obviously.

Here's the thing I want you to know today, friend. Your prayers matter. They are heard. 

But you have concerns, you say? Issues with prayer? They may sound like some of the following:

How do I know my prayers are heard?

When I pray, I feel like my prayers hit a glass ceiling.

I've been praying the same prayer for years and nothing has changed.

I'm scared that His answer will look differently than I want.

I just don't feel like praying today. 

I've messed up. I've sinned. My prayers are no good.

He doesn't speak back to me. 

I can't feel His presence.

Am I saying the right words?

Am I praying for the right things?

Well, my answer to you is simple. In fact, just two words:

Keep praying.

Don't you know who you are, beloved? You are a child of God, made by Him, for Him, in His very image. Never say your prayers are not enough. 

Because He is enough. 

My friend, draw near. Draw near in obedience, draw near begging to know Jesus in a new and radical way. In some moments of prayer you will feel alone and small, but in others...oh, in others, your prayers will shake the very foundations of the earth and shape the very future of it.

Your prayers are powerful. They matter. They can change things. 

But your prayers can't be any of those things if you don't pray them.

Your prayers won't matter unless you pray them.

Simple, huh?

So the next time you think prayer time should be skipped because what does it matter, anyway? Here's the reminder. Two little words, one big message, straight from the throne room of God:

Keep Praying.