Our Worst Prayers are Still Prayers

I’ve been battling in my prayer life recently. I pray at night, and lately it seems like this blanket of fatigue descends over me the moment I get to my basement prayer area. Suddenly I can’t think straight, can’t even hardly stand up. I don’t dare close my eyes or I’ll wake up flopped over the couch at four in the morning. Now, mind you, I might have just finished doing any number of exciting things – it doesn’t matter. It seems the moment I set my mind to praying my basement becomes a chamber of slumber.

I’ve learned over the years to simply to battle through these seasons in faith. God has always been gracious to deliver me to a more robust daily prayer, but it can still be discouraging in the meantime. I’ve been greatly helped recently by the following thoughts of C. S. Lewis from his “Letters to Malcolm”.

I have a notion that what seem our worst prayers may really be, in God’s eyes, our best. Those, I mean, which are least supported by devotional feeling and contend with the greatest disinclination. For these, perhaps, being nearly all will, come from a deeper level than feeling. In feeling there is so much that is really not ours – so much that comes from weather and health or from the last book read. One thing seems certain. It is no good angling for the rich moments. God sometimes seems to speak to us most intimately when He catches us, as it were, off our guard. (116-117)

How true – our devotional feelings can come from a lot of non-devotional places. Devotion is the will at work before it is reward, but thank God devotion is ALWAYS rewarded!