If I am honest, I seldom feel the presence of God in prayer or elsewhere. If I am genuine, I often come to prayer to the absence of a sense that God met me tenderly in return. If I am sincere, I frequently come to meet with God in a hidden place.
Yet here is the crazy part! My heart is continually drawn to that hidden place. I constantly desire to meet with God in prayer. Though I rarely feel the presence of God like I do a hug from my wife or the voice of a friend, my heart…SOMETHING within me yearns for prayer. Though I cannot point to a particular sensible feeling of God’s consistent presence, I know, SOMEHOW, that when I come to God and expose my senses, my thoughts, feelings, and circumstances without any cosmetic, God smiles.
I cannot pinpoint it, but somewhere and somehow I know that my Father loves me. I realize that God is beyond my senses. He is beyond my mind. But when my heart yearns for and desires to keep coming back to that hidden and shrouded place, I realize SOMETHING is happening that is so deep and far enough beyond me that my prayers are always being heard whether or not I FEEL Abba’s embrace.
I feel this too. But if I’m honest, I walked away on Sunday night wondering if it was true. I thought, ‘why pray?’ if He doesn’t always listen. My heart won’t always be 100% right, so does He listen? I wrestled with that Monday morning when I opened my journal again to pray. I brought my questions to God. He knows my heart, and that it’s not always right, but He is with me in these moments too. You put it well — “I cannot pinpoint it, but somewhere and somehow I know that my Father loves me.” Thanks for posting, PC.
I hear you. Sunday night still has me remembering that, yes, I will never be perfect enough to say God hears my prayers, but it is a constant reminder that I need to find repentance every night at the end of the day. I have to get myself right with God so that I can be in a place where I can really trust the things I wrote about here.