DN, Vol. 3: When God Strangely Resembles a Brick Wall

"Save me, O God! For the waters have come up to my neck.
I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold; 
I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me. 
I am weary with my crying out; my throat is parched. 
My eyes grow dim with waiting for my God." 


- Psalm 69:1-3


Anybody who's prayed has experienced those times when it feels like you're speaking to a brick wall. After all, it's rare that anybody hears an audible response to their prayers, and, from an early age, it's sort of implied to Christians in church that prayer is a kind of one-way thing. I don't know how many pastors or church teachers would want to admit to this, but a lot of what we do and teach implies to our churches that they should not really expecting God to respond to what we humans have to say to him.

The scriptural truth, however, is that God is a God who hears our cries, who knows what's going on, and who is active and engaged with our world. God rescued the Israelites out of Egypt not only because it was his plan, but also because he heard their cries. The Psalmist in the passage I quoted above is expectant that God will hear his cry, even if his circumstances are beginning to cause him to worry. God is alive and active. God is not a brick wall.

But sometimes it feels like it.

Sometimes, especially when we pray, it just feels like we're talking to a wall or into the empty air. Sometimes it's hard to remember if any of our previous prayers have been answered, it's hard to remember the truth of scripture, and in those moments there's every motivation to think that prayer is a waste of time at best, and a foolish delusion at worst.

In my life and relationship with God, what I do during those times is I "reset" the way that I'm praying. I try to see if there are any mindless/automatic prayers that I'm doing and I examine whether I really mean those prayers. Most importantly, I ask God both whether I'm praying about the things he wants me to, and in the way he wants me to.

You'd be surprised how easy it is to let a prayer lead you away from God rather than to him. It sounds like a pretty easy contradiction to avoid, but actually it's really easy to slip into this. You can start praying about something with all of the desire to follow God in the world, but if we only pray by telling God what we want him to do and not asking him what he wants us to do and/or pray about, it is far too easy to let our prayer lead us away from God instead of to him. And if this is the way we're praying, is there any wonder why he wouldn't respond to our prayers?

If you're in this boat, let me encourage you to pray knowing that God wants to engage you, not just listen to you tell him what to do. And you can do this by making sure to ask the following:


- God, am I praying about the right things/people/situations?
- God, how should I pray about this? What do you want for this thing/person/situation?
- God, open my ears and heart and mind and soul to receive what you're saying to me. We can't make it just trying to steer this ship by ourselves. We need you.