Prayer Is Not Performance, It's Relationship!

LET'S TALK ABOUT PRAYER

You can sit and watch a 3 hour movie with no distractions. You can scroll social media for hours, watch an NFL football game, work on hobbies, focus on everything, but the moment you decide to pray, suddenly your mind floods with anything and everything: bills, stress, text messages, what somebody said, the birthday you forgot, the letter you were supposed to mail!! Random thoughts that were nowhere in your mnd 5 minutes ago suddenly flood your brain squeezing out the prayer you intended on bringing to the Lord. WHY?

Prayer matters. Prayer is not just talking into the air. Prayer is communion with God. Prayer is alignment. It's where we get our strength. It's where peace comes from. Prayer is where your mind gets reset. And Satan, our enemy? He doesn't like that. The enemy has no problem with distracted believers, in fact he's the one that encourages it. He has no problem with people who are busy and disconnected from God. But when a person truly begins to pray, when a person begins to seek the Father with sincerity, that becomes dangerous to the knigdom of darkness.

Listen clearly, you're not a bad Christian believer because you get distracted. You're human. Even mature followers of Jesus have momens where we have to refocus. I deal with it a lot. Yes, me. I am not exempt. Many people deal with it. The difference is not whether distractions come, it whether you quit praying because of it. A lot of people  self-condemn the moment their minds begin to wander.. 'Why can't I focus?'  'What's wrong with me?' 'Why am I thinking about every thing else?' STOP! Don't stay there. The moment you recognize the distraction, just come back. Bring your mind back. Bring your heart back. Come back to the Father again, and again, and again, and again, and again if you have to. Because prayer is not performance, it's relationship! That's why scripture tells us to guard our hearts, and guard our minds (Phillippians 4:7, Proverbs 4:23). If we don't guard them, the world will constantly pull our attention in every direction.

Everytime you refocus during prayer, you're training your heart. You're trainig it to return to God instead of staying scattered. Some of the most powerful prayers are not the polished prayers, they are the prayers where you fought through distractions. You fought through just to stay in His presence. SO .. IF YOU GOT DISTRACTED TODAY, pray again. IF YOUR MIND WANDERED, come back again. IF LIFE GOT LOUD, seek Him again. The goal is not perfection. The goal is a heart that keeps returning to Him. The enemy is not afraid of a perfect prayer voice, he's afraid of a believer who keeps coming back to God no matter how many times he or she is distracted. No matter how many times they've pulled away. 

Distractions are nornal, so do not get upset with yourself; just return your attention to God. And "HE WILL KEEP IN PERFECT PEACE-THE MIND WHO IS STAYED ON HIM" (Isaiah 26:3)

Until He Comes,

-Pat-