8. Feelings, Faith, & Expectations

Dear Jim,

I don’t think that you’re stuck on the issue at all! I think you’re asking the right questions and are setting yourself up to avoid the pitfalls of putting either too little or too much faith in your feelings. The bottom line is that I’m glad you’re sharing your frustrations with someone, and that you’re open to further discussion.

The desire to experience God in prayer is a good desire that is put in you by God. Don’t beat yourself up for wanting it so bad that you are growing frustrated. This just shows the strength of your longing for God, and he sees that. The fact is that we all start with an intuitive sense that when we approach God, we will see some kind of result. Sometimes, by his grace, we experience that result, but often times we don’t. Sometimes this is because of something we’re doing wrong (or something we’re not doing) in prayer. Sometimes, God withholds that particular grace from us. Most often, however, I find that it’s an issue of false expectations. We don’t think we experience God because we are holding onto certain expectations of what it will feel like when we do.

Many of us experience something positive with God in the early days of our payer life, and we want more of the same. This leads us to keep looking for that same experience again and again. Still others of us might be taught that we should pray until we achieve a certain outcome or feel a certain way. We need to let these expectations go and be open to experiencing God in new and different ways during our prayer time. It’s best to press in and not be derailed if there are a few days to a week or two when we don’t experience anything in prayer, knowing that when we do experience God it might be in ways that are totally unexpected and unconventional.

There is one other, more basic reason why you might be experiencing dryness in prayer. Please don’t hear this in a critical way--we are all in the same boat here--but you might simply need to ask God for more faith. Prayer requires a belief that God is there and that he is listening lovingly. When we find that our faith in this truth is scarce, we just need to ask God for more.

Sometimes I myself feel stretched because I feel that I lack the faith to pray for my circumstances. During those times, I ask God to strengthen my faith. God sometimes stretches our faith muscles to give them room to grow.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION:

What expectations do you have about what your prayer time should feel like? Take a few minutes to ask God about those expectations. Could God be asking you to let go of some or all of them?

Are there ways God is stretching your faith through your prayer life? How? Take the time to ask him for the faith to pray for those things that are difficult for you to believe he will answer.