There have been chapters in my story of faith when my time in prayer is like pulling teeth –that is, God pulling my teeth. Sometimes, I fool myself into thinking I have nothing to talk to God about. I have nothing to pray for or nobody to intercede for. Recently, I fell into one of these spells so I decided to make that the very center of my prayer. Why was I afraid of opening dialogue with God?

Have you ever had to make a really important phone call or send an urgent email that might be life-changing or perhaps required you to tell someone some bad news or maybe you knew that bad news was coming to you? As you dial, your palms begin to perspire. As the phone is ringing, you wish they didn’t answer so you could put off the inevitable for a while longer? I think sometimes, I treat God this way. If I pretend there is nothing to talk about then I don’t have to expose a wound that I have hidden from myself for so long. If I save my prayer time to the end of the day, God would understand that I’m too tired to chat. If I don’t ask, God can’t say no. My awareness of God’s active existence and participation in my life and in His power has caused me to be fearful of approaching Him and maintaining an open relationship with our Father. But if He, indeed, is our Father, what’s there to fear?

My prayer today is that we take time to be with Him in prayer. There’s always something to pray about. Being on this site gives us no excuse, really. But even if, hypothetically, there was absolutely nothing to pray about, our God still wants to be with us in that very intimate way. To be vulnerable to God and to allow Him to speak to our hearts through silence can be frightening because we know He can say anything He wants. Maybe He’ll challenge us to improve in some area of our lives. He could throw curve balls at us. But ultimately, no matter the topic of His message to us, the subject line is always the same: “I love you, I believe in you, I am here with you.” So, is there really any reason to be afraid? Peace~

–Dorinamae, Moderator