It's Okay For Your Prayer To Go Through Different Seasons, Too

I'm going to give you a little bit of insight into my brain right now, and hopefully it encourages you a little bit.

As I'm writing this, I've sat down to do my Bible study and read through it, but haven't been able to actually start yet. The tears keep flowing, and I'm having a hard time finding the words to pray and talk through why. My faith hasn't been bad lately, but it hasn't been on a mountain top either, and so I feel like I'm in this funky in between place. God feels kind of far, but I still feel confident in His character and that He hasn't left me.

Finally, I prayed, "God, I feel like I keep coming back to You every night and have felt like I haven't prayed enough throughout the day."

I know that probably sounds silly, but I've walked through such beautiful seasons in my prayer life where I'm literally praying constantly, and I feel so connected with God, and I think I've made that my benchmark for what my prayers need to be like all the time.

And God is so kind, y'all. So incredibly kind. I feel Him put on my heart, "You write about how your Bible study can go through different seasons, so why can't your prayer life?"

It's so true. I've written a ton about how your Bible study can look different as you change and go through different seasons, but I never connected that to my prayers. I don't know why, but as God put that on my heart, I just felt so much grace. God loves to talk to us, and He wants us to bring Him everything, but prayer was never meant to be a burden nor a checklist. He is not keeping track of our prayer minutes and punishing us when we pray less than yesterday.

I don't know if this resonates with anyone else, but I'm feeling a lot of relief.

I place so much of my perfectionism on God, assuming that because I expect something of myself that He expects it too. That's simply not true. God is so much gentler than my own mind. He is so kind and so patient. Jesus died for a relationship with me, not so that I'd feel like I have to talk to Him a certain amount so that He'd love me.

He knows that I am going to fail, sin, and make mistakes. No matter how hard I try, I will never be perfect, and He loves me anyways. God knows I have so many fleeting emotions, and that my life will go through seasons - and my faith will be impacted by that, too. It's not bad, and it's not something that I should resist, but instead I should focus on meeting Him in that new, different season.

An analogy that has really encouraged me is thinking about my relationship with God as a marriage. When you're married, you may not always feel butterflies and rainbows, but you always love your partner. There may be times that your lives are busy and don't have as much quality time, but you still work to prioritize communicating. In our relationship with God, we might not always feel His presence or those butterflies of being on spiritual high, but it doesn't mean we don't love Him and He doesn't love us, and it's certainly not an indicator of if He's happy with us. There may be seasons when it's harder and not as natural to pray, but you continue to work on talking to Jesus, and that's what counts.

God sees our heart, more than anything. When we continue to faithfully come to Him, honest with our struggles, fears, failures, and doubts, He meets us with an abundance of grace and kindness. God will never turn you away or reject you, but instead He will give you the strength and mercy to keep going.

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At the end of the time I was supposed to be doing my Bible study, I told God that I haven't gotten anything done. You know what He said?

"You needed to know that I love you,"

That is the God I serve.