Something I’ve discovered through experience is that good praying isn’t about spinning in your problems.
What Prayer Is Not
It’s not a mantra of:
How do I figure this out?!
How do I figure this out?!
How do I figure this out?!
It’s much more advanced yet subtle than problem spinning for a solution.
Most people pray like they’re placing an order at a restaurant. They tell God what they want, maybe add a please, and then wait for delivery. When nothing shows up, they assume the kitchen is closed.
But prayer isn’t a transaction. It’s a posture. And the posture that works is surrender.
What It Means to Surrender to God
Good praying, for me, is about my accepting that I don’t know the solution but that God knows, perfectly, what my next step should be.
Prayer, for me, is a surrender to God. Into that potential.
“I don’t know, but You do.”
That’s the heart of it. It’s about getting out of my own way enough that life has the opportunity to miraculously turn for me.
This isn’t passive. It’s not giving up. It’s recognizing that my mind can only see a tiny fraction of what’s actually available. When I stop insisting on my solution, I create space for solutions I couldn’t have imagined.
What Miracles Actually Look Like
And “miracles” don’t always look like a Hallmark movie, at first.
I have to be trusting that life is presenting me with something I NEED to gain clarity and grow in wisdom.
It’s showing me something within myself I’ve been refusing to acknowledge and feel.
How often have I had these same feelings triggered but ignored them completely?
The miracle might look like losing the job that was slowly killing you. It might look like the relationship ending that you didn’t have the courage to leave. It might look like the plan falling apart so a better one could emerge.
When you’re in surrender, you trust the process even when you can’t see where it’s going. Especially then.
The Full Spectrum
Life is giving me an opportunity to actually EXPERIENCE at every level of the spectrum.
And when I surrender to God and explore that spectrum, my prayers tend to wind up answered.
The discomfort I was trying to avoid by praying for specific outcomes? That discomfort was the prayer being answered. The trigger I wanted removed? That trigger was the invitation to heal something deeper.
Surrender to God means trusting that what’s happening IS the answer, even when it feels like the opposite of what you asked for.
This is the lens the Bible is meant to be read through.
Explore the Jesus Lightning book series for mystical Bible interpretation that reveals the inner meaning of Scripture.
Godspeed.