What if I told you I quit  praying for the things I once prayed for? Stopped. Closed my mouth. And quit asking. Not because I lack faith. I didn’t quit because I gave up or don’t believe in miraculous healing. I have not stopped daring to hope. I have not quit praying altogether, but the way I pray changed.

I began asking myself, is it possible I missed the purpose of prayer?

Was my heart and eyes so fixed on the result of my prayers that I missed Jesus in the process?

I was led astray. I was placing my trust in Jesus’ answer for me rather than in the healing power found in Jesus himself.

So I stopped coming before the throne asking and pleading for the deep desires that once held my soul captive. I had hit a wall and was fatigued of praying the same thing over and over that I came to see my self-focused ways of praying were not how God intended it. I quit praying for the thing I have prayed for four years and began praying the total opposite. Though difficult to pray in the beginning,  I began uttering a simple prayer,

“Lord, I thank you for this gift of pain of infertility. I choose to rejoice in this suffering. Now please strip EVERY desire and longing within me and replace them with new things. Take these emotions, longings and desires and fill them afresh with you.”

8 weeks ago I changed my direction of prayers and in the process God has flipped my life upside down and wrecked me anew. I no longer am living the defeated life because I had believed my prayers fell on deaf ears and I was running in endless, pointless circles.  I needed to lift my eyes off of me and up to Him. I am free to live victorious because Christ has already achieved all that I need. I can walk in victory right here, right now in the midst of any struggle in my life because of Jesus. Death is already conquered, its grip can’t hold me down and the gift of eternity is mine, today and forever.

Jesus is my hope and the best is yet to come.

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