The honest prayer

By Daniel Francis

Sometimes, I get caught up thinking about prayer. The thought process typically goes along the track of, “Okay God, I’m grateful that you have brought these things into my life. Help me through these things. I love you and please keep an eye on my friends and family.”

Every so often, I start praying and I get caught up in this paradoxical thought loop: “God, if you already know everything then nothing I am saying is a surprise to You.” Then I start thinking that there is an element to prayer where yes, I am building a relationship with God, but I am also bearing my soul.

The bearing of my soul also plays on how honest I can be during prayer to tell God about the sides of myself that aren’t so great. Again, He already knows about these sides of us so then why is it sometimes hard to be honest during prayer?

Maybe it is just me, and I don’t want to assume for others, but there are moments where I do feel a bit of shame while praying. I know He knows everything about me, the good, the bad, and the in between. Yet sometimes I can’t help feeling a bit of shame when speaking to Him about the bad and asking for help.

Think about how you pray. Do you bare it all to God? Are you honest about your sins? Do you try to take accountability for your wrongdoing? Or do you glide over that bit and get straight into anything else?

The degree to which we build our relationship with God through prayer must be negatively impacted by our inability to be 100 per cent honest with God during prayer. We may not even recognise that we are withholding information or avoiding topics that we don’t want to address.

God already knows all, so by our not bringing forward everything in prayer, we are saying that we do not want to offer it all up to God. Is it that we don’t believe that we can change those truly bad portions of ourselves? Can we chalk it all up to shame? Maybe we are so accustomed to our usual prayer routine that we need a little shake-up?

I believe even though we know there are activities we should be doing to help build our faith, we should re-examine the level of intentionality that goes into each.

Yes, we should pray to nurture our relationship with God, but it should not just be a by-the-way action. We should approach prayer with a level of proactivity. We should be giving God 100 per cent when praying. He should get the good, the bad and the in between.

The act of baring it all will highlight where we need growth, and we should not be fearful to say the bad and ask for assistance. Yes, we are flawed as humans, but does that mean we should not try to better ourselves?

It starts by baring it all before God. In that vulnerable state and with full trust in God, we work our way up and truly start on a path of change.

Daniel Francis is a millennial helping other millennials. He is a two-time author of the books The Millennial Mind and The Millennial Experience, and an entrepreneur. Over the past four years, he has served as a Personal Development Coach whose work targets Millennials and helps them tap into their full potential. He is also a self-publishing coach and has guided hundreds on self-publishing their book successfully.

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