Transform Your Pessimistic Prayer Life Today

Let’s face it. It’s hard to pray. It’s hard enough for you to make an honest request to a friend you trust for something you genuinely need. However, when you label your request as “praying” and consider “God” a friend, fear often creeps in, leading to feelings of guilt. Guilt leads to doubt, which eventually leads to a pessimistic prayer life. You want change, but you’re just not sure how to accomplish transformation.

Prayer is the conversation where problematic life events and your ever-present God meet. Unfortunately, when you do go to God in prayer, you focus on what you are trying to say and how you should say it. But Paul E. Miller says, “focusing on the conversation is like trying to drive a car while looking AT the windshield instead of looking THROUGH it.” Have you ever tried to do that? It’s dangerous – don’t try it.

Jesus, Your Example

 

Why did Jesus pray? You would think that since Jesus is the Son of God, he wouldn’t need to pray, or at least he wouldn’t need a specific prayer time, because he’d be in such a constant state of prayer due to his divine connection to his Father. He’s got a direct line, right? But Jesus seemed to need time alone with God. He’s our example. We should follow him.

The New Testament describes several places where Jesus took time to be alone to pray.

Matthew 14:23;

Mark 1:35;

Mark 6:45-46;

Mark 14:32-34;

Luke 4:42;

Luke 5:16;

Luke 6:12;

Luke 22:41-44.

If Jesus needed to pull away from people and noise to pray, then it makes sense that you need to do the same. Efficiency, multitasking, and busyness all kill intimacy with God. You can’t get to know God on the run. Even though you have a long commute to the office, you cannot focus on the traffic, the radio, your coffee, and a quick prayer. That is not truly considered “alone time.”

~ Dependent Child of God

Jesus moved away from human contact to meet his Father face-to-face in prayer because he understood his identity as a dependent child of God. He says,

“The Son can do nothing of his own accord” (John 5:19)

“I can do nothing on my own” (John 5:30)

“I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me” (John 8:28)

Jesus defines himself only in relationship with God, not as God. Because he cannot live life on his own, he prays. And he prays. And he prays. It is a childlike dependency upon God – the dependency he also calls you to have.

~ One-Person Focus

 

Have you ever noticed that throughout his ministry, Jesus would focus on one person at a time? The blind man outside of the city gate, the woman at the well, Zacchaeus up in the tree, Lazarus coming from the grave, the bleeding woman, and so on. Because of his one-on-one focus, you can infer that Jesus needs to connect personally with you and with his heavenly Father. To truly accomplish this, he needed to get away to pray. When he did, he came to God as a child coming to his Dad for his needs. Whether you have children or not, a child’s simple, naïve request can pull at your heartstrings. God feels the same about you.

Cynicism – The Worst Form of Pessimism

One of the biggest deterrents to your childlike prayer is cynicism. Your cynical spirit is the opposite of a childlike spirit. To be cynical means you have a negative attitude toward the world. Cynicism creates a numbness toward life. Your outlook on life is that nothing good will ever happen to you, or for you, ever. The world has already damaged you, and even when good things happen, you cannot be happy because you are just waiting for the bad to follow quickly. There is a “doom and gloom” about you that you just cannot shake.

~ Your Approach

You approach prayer this way because you have tried it in the past and haven’t seen God work through your prayers, especially regarding healing or personal requests you believe should be answered. You quickly wonder if praying makes any difference at all. Even if you attempt to pray, and God responds, you often wonder if it would have just happened anyway because of the laws of nature. You feel phony. Life is phony because your hope expired.

Transformation

I could continue at great length discussing the vein of cynicism that runs through your heart, but I’m going to focus on several ways Jesus shows you how to cure it. This type of pessimism is a powerful spiritual sickness that doesn’t heal quickly. But have hope! You can overcome it with the power of the Holy Spirit, along with your effort to seek him. Jesus overcame death with the help of the Holy Spirit; he certainly can help you overcome your cynicism.

~ Be Warm but Cautious

In Matthew 10:16, Jesus gives you a warning. He says, “I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” As a Christian, you should recognize that Jesus is sending you out to be salt and light in the evil world. The overwhelming temptation when faced with evil is to become cynical and lose your desire to follow Jesus’ example to be “wise like serpents yet innocent as doves.” He wants you to combine a secure trust in God (warm) with a carefulness about the presence of evil (cautious) – evil that is in your own heart, as well as the hearts of others. It’s OK to be wary of people, but not so much that you surround your heart with iron. Toward others, be warm with the trust you have in God and cautious at the same time.

~ Hope by Trusting

Three words: cynicism kills hope. Your cynical world is fixed and immovable. Dreaming feels like foolishness. Risk becomes intolerable. Prayer feels pointless, as if you are talking to the wind.

But Jesus is all about hope. Hope begins with the heart of God. Your cynical mind may believe in the Christian hope of redemption, yet it breathes with a cynical spirit, all the while missing the heart of God due to a lack of trust. However, when you begin to trust the heart of God and how he loves to give, then prayer will start to feel completely natural to you. It can take time, but as you persevere in your time with God, you will find it easier and easier with each passing moment.

Perseverance – Trust – Hope, in that order.

~ Develop the Spirit of a Child

C.S. Lewis said, “Those who will never be fooled can never be delighted, because without self-forgetfulness there can be no delight.”

Children are delighted in the simplest of things: a butterfly meandering in a field of flowers, the feel of a puppy dog’s tongue on their faces, a simple balloon, the sound of their voice in a drinking glass, and so much more! Unfortunately, your cynical attitude cannot be childlike. You avoid foolishness, so you can never be delighted.

To break free and become childlike, you need to stop analyzing what you don’t know and begin clinging to what you do know about God, even if it is only one small thing! One baby step at a time, each day, will bring you closer to God and further away from cynicism.

~ Improve the Spirit of Thankfulness

Thankfulness is the focus of Philippians 4:6: “Don’t worry about anything.” Then it goes on to say, “Thank [God] for what he has done.” Verse 8 tells you what to be thankful for, so you know how to come to God with a grateful heart. It says, “Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.”

Nothing eliminates your cynicism better or faster than a spirit of thankfulness. Thankfulness isn’t a matter of forcing yourself to see the happy side of life. Your cynical heart can easily feel like a phony when praying a prayer of thankfulness. Still, God uses those continued attempts (let me say again), continued attempts to soften your cynical heart and return it to a hopeful heart. Thanking God restores the natural order of your dependence on God. It enables you to eventually see life as it truly is – beautiful, wonderful, and filled with the glory of God.

~ Cultivate the Spirit of Repentance

Cultivating the spirit of repentance is a complex issue to face – I know, because I had to face it in my own life. The problem is that you feel deeply superior because you think you can see through everything. You can recognize the sin (or beam, as the Bible says) in everyone else but your lack of purity in your own heart. Ouch!

There is a fracture between your heart and your behavior. You talk about Jesus without the presence of Jesus. There is a disconnect between the empty religious performance of your speech and action, so you feel phony, like a split personality. In feeling or believing you are fake, you think everyone is bogus, too. Cynicism focuses on the other person’s split personality and need for repentance. It lacks the humility necessary first to remove the beam from your own eye.

Repentance, however, brings the split personality together, followed by the restoration of an honest life. It heals the cynicism you feel. It’s a matter of coming out of denial about the truth cynicism plays in your life, and humbling yourself before God in true repentance to break the chain of cynicism.

Conclusion

The only appropriate way to turn from a weary, cynical spirit is for you to focus your eyes on Jesus truly. Cynicism looks in the wrong direction. You must reorient your heart to focus on the cross, rather than yourself and the world. Your heart (as well as your eyes) must “look up” instead of “look out.”

Transforming your pessimistic prayer life takes eradicating the cynicism deep within your heart. It’s not impossible, but it will take intentional day-by-day humility before God.

“Think about things of heaven, not the things of earth.” Colossians 3:2