What Would It Cost You to Pray It Again?

Hey guys, this is it. This is the last episode in the series that we have been calling The Prayers I Stopped Praying. Six weeks ago, we started something together, and today we finish it. Hey everyone, I'm Melissa, and this is my question for you. And if you've walked this whole series with me, I am so glad you came back for this final episode to close out the series because this is the episode it has all been building toward. And if you're just now finding us right here at the very end, don't worry and don't go anywhere because you picked a good day to start listening to this podcast. So let me take you back for a second. When this series began, we pulled one quiet thread, the prayers we've stopped praying. And week by week, we went looking for them. We named the prayer for the thing that dragged on so long, we just finally stopped asking. The one that went silent when God didn't answer the way we needed him or expected him to. We talked about the prayer we were almost afraid to pray because we weren't sure what God would ask us to do. The one we gave up on for a person who seemed like they were never going to change. And then last week, the one so many of us had quietly stopped praying for ourselves. Five weeks, five prayers we sat down without ever really deciding to set them down and walk away from them. But here's what I couldn't stop thinking about as I sat down to record this final episode. I didn't want to end this series by handing you a sixth prayer to set down. I wanted to actually end it by helping you pick one of those prayers back up. So whatever yours is, whatever the reason it went quiet, here's my question for you today. What would it cost you to pray it again? So, what would it cost you to pray it again? Before we jump in, I just want to say this because I don't think there's just one answer to that question. We spent five weeks on five different reasons that prayers go quiet. So I don't want to just pretend that they're all the same for everyone. There are different reasons. Everyone has different reasons. Yours is yours. For some of you, praying it again costs you the energy to hope when you're just so tired of hoping. For others, it might mean risking that same disappointment all over again and asking God for the very thing that He didn't give you the last time you asked Him. Maybe for some it's a little bit scarier than that. You went quiet because you were a little afraid of what God might ask of you. And to pray it again, you'd have to stop dodging that thing that you've been trying to avoid for so long. For some people, it costs you believing again for a person who has given you every reason to quit believing in them. You've just seen them do the same things and make the same mistakes over and over again. And praying for them again just feels impossible. It feels like just a waste of time. For some people, the ones who pray for everyone else, it cost you the hardest thing on this whole list because it means putting your own name back on the prayer list and believing that you matter enough to even ask God for your deepest desires. Those are all different costs, but every single one of them is real. So I'm not gonna try to ask you to fit what cost you into someone else's box. These are all very different and they come from different places. But here's what every single one of those prayers has in common, no matter why it went quiet. It's a conversation with God that used to happen that suddenly stopped. Or maybe not suddenly, over time, but in any case, it stopped. And that's the common thread. Five reasons, one quiet prayer. And this is the thing I want you to walk out of this whole series holding on to you do not have to fix the reason before you come back to the conversation. You don't have to stop being tired. You don't have to be over the disappointment. You don't have to have lost the fear or seen them finally change or suddenly feel like you matter. That's the mistake so many of us make. We think that we have to get ourselves all sorted out first, that we have to fix everything, get our faith back up to where God will be proud of us and earn his attention somehow. We think that all of that has to come together before we're allowed to pray again. No, you can bring God the prayer and the reason that it went quiet in the very same breath, but God can hold them both. He's God, he can take it. Okay, so let's turn to scripture. There's a night in the Bible that I keep coming back to as I was reading through and studying for this episode. There's a man named Jacob, he's all alone, he's in the dark by a river, and he ends up wrestling with God until the sun comes up. He was holding on, refusing to let go, and he said, I will not let you go until you bless me. Those are words that he said with to God. He was struggling with something so much that he said, I am not gonna let you go until I see this blessing. And he gets the blessing, but he walks away with a limp. And I just love that so much because that limp wasn't proof that he lost. He had been in a battle, a hard-fought battle. That limp was proof that he held on, he met God in the dark, and he would not let go. And yeah, he walked away marked by it, but he also walked away blessed. He even walked away with a new name. That's the truth about bringing the hard prayer back to God. It might cost you something. You might walk away a little tender, a little sore, a little changed, carrying something that you weren't carrying before. But you don't leave that kind of encounter with God empty. You leave blessed, you leave changed, you leave knowing that you finally stopped letting go. So hear me, on this last day of this series, I want to say this as plainly and as lovingly as I know how. Whatever you've been calling it, whether it's peace or being realistic, saying that you're fine, you're over it, uh, calling it low maintenance, I want you to stop dressing up the quiet as something holy. That prayer that you sat down didn't die. You just stopped saying it out loud. And God didn't walk away from that conversation. You did. Gently, maybe even understandably, whatever the circumstance was at the time, whatever your reason was for walking away, for reasons that made complete sense at the time, whatever it was, you still walked away. But God is still right there. He's still leaning in and he's still waiting for your voice to come back to the thing that you both know you never actually stop caring about. So here's the part I really need you to take with you. You don't have to come back strong, you don't have to come back rested or fearless or over it or full of the faith that you're not sure you actually feel anymore. You don't even have to come back with the right words or a good attitude about how long it's taking. You don't have to promise anything to God about how it's gonna turn out. You just have to come back. You just have to bring the prayer and whatever went quiet along with it, and you just have to set it back down in front of God. Don't try to pray it perfectly. You just have to pray it again. So today, not next week, not when you're ready, because if we're honest, ready isn't coming. We're never fully going to be ready. So today, I want you to just pick one, just one. The prayer that kept surfacing as we walk through this series week after week, and I think you already know which one it is, that it's probably been sitting with you through this whole episode. I hope that it's been resurfacing and that whatever sparked you as we were walking through this series, whichever one of the five resonated with you the most, I really hope that you will pick it back up again and remember what that was. And I want you to pray it again out loud if you can, right where you are. It can be one sentence, it can be shaky, it can just be, God, I'm scared to want this again. But here it is. Because that's not a small thing, but that might be the bravest thing that you do all week. So before we close out this series, let me pray a blessing over you. I hope that this series has inspired you and lifted you up. I pray that you would find the courage to want it again. May you feel God lean in the second you come back to Him. And may the cost be real and the blessing be greater. And may you walk away, not with one more prayer to set down, but with one that you finally picked up again. Well, friends, that's the end of our series, The Prayers I Stopped Praying. If this series meant something to you, can I ask you to do two quick things for me? First, if you missed any of these uh last five weeks, I want you to go back and walk through them. It was built to be heard as a whole, and there may be one that's waiting out there with your name on it that might resonate with you, that might help you pick up that prayer again. And second, I hope that you would just think of the one person who came to mind while you were listening today. Send them this episode, send them this series, send them the link to this podcast because you might be handing them the exact permission they've been waiting for to start praying again, too. And this space isn't going anywhere, you guys. We're gonna keep going. We're gonna start a new series. We'll keep meeting right here. Keep asking the same questions that draw us back to God. I've got so much more for you in store, and I really hope you'll come back and join me because I don't want you to miss it at all. So until then, I hope that you would please keep asking, keep listening, and remember. The prayer you set down was never too far gone for you to pick it back up. And neither are you. God is waiting to reconnect with you and to help you remember that prayer and to be there ready to answer it. Before you go, if today's question stayed with you, I'd love to keep the conversation going. Each week, I send a short email called This Week's Question, a Quiet Invitation, and it's a simple reflection to help you stay grounded, to pay attention, to dive deeper into God's Word, and to walk with God throughout your week. You can sign up at myquestion for you dot com, bringing you encouragement for your spirit and wisdom for your walk.