I used to think prayer was a formula.
If I just learned the right words, the right technique, the right posture, God would listen, and my life would change.
Then came the season when I doubted if God even listened to me at all.
Or worse, maybe God did hear, but just didn’t care.
There were times I assumed my prayers weren’t answered because I’d done something wrong.
Some hidden sin. Some spiritual deficiency I had to uncover and fix before I could be heard.
Then I tried the transaction approach.
You do this for me, God, and I’ll do this for You.
It felt like I was bargaining with the sky.
But over time, and through a lot of silence, I began to see prayer differently.
Not as a way to get God to do what I want, but as a relationship that changes me.
Prayer stopped being about pulling levers in heaven and became about sitting in the presence of Love, letting that Love reshape my heart.
And slowly, I noticed:
God was making me into the kind of person who could answer other people’s prayers.
The hands, the voice, the presence they needed.
That’s what Jesus teaches here.
Ask, seek, knock - not to get what we want, but to keep the door open for transformation.
Because the real gift isn’t a thing. It’s the Giver.
For When You’ve Tried Every Way to Pray
A Prayer Inspired by Luke 11:1–13
Loving God,
I come to You without a formula, without a deal, without a script.
I come to be with You.
I confess the ways I’ve treated You like a vending machine,
Punching in my requests and wondering why nothing drops.
I confess the times I’ve walked away in silence,
Certain You didn’t care.
But You are a Father who listens.
A Mother who holds.
A Friend who stays.
Shape me in this relationship.
Teach me to pray in a way that opens me,
To Your presence,
To Your formation,
To the mystery that I might become part of Your answer to someone else’s longing.
Keep me asking.
Keep me seeking.
Keep me knocking,
Until my heart beats in time with Yours.
And when my words run out,
When all I have is a sigh,
Let me remember You hear even that.
You’ve never stopped listening.
Amen.
Today, in a perfect storm of emotional situations, I desperately needed these words. Thank you.
Sometimes a sigh, sometimes groaning. He cares. He comforts us so that we can comfort others with the comfort with which we have been comforted. First we have to go to Him to be comforted, to be forgiven, to be welcomed home, to be given a seat at the table. Amen