How To Know Where Your Prayers Are Landing

Sometimes you fling prayers toward heaven like you’re just practicing your aim. Other times it’s a transfer from your cupped hands to God’s big ones. The difference is where you’re standing.

I’ve-Got-This Ground

I’ve-Got-This is familiar ground. This is where we’re strong, sure, capable. Self-taught. Self-sufficient. Self-made.

We’re compelled by good motives. Self-less ones. We don’t want to be needy. Take up too much space in someone else’s overloaded day. Complicate momentary peace by making it awkward. Slosh water on the fun. Expect anyone else to adhere to our high standards.

But there’s a smidge of not wanting to trust others in the mix. A dash of control. A drizzle of old-fashioned fear. The stuff walls are made of.

Walls safeguard what feels small and vulnerable on the inside. Believe me, I get it. I’m a recovering-wall-builder learning there’s no such thing as no risk. The walls I construct to maintain control, comfort, perception go both ways—trapping me in while shutting others out.

They make a world feel small, not in a connected way but in a closing-in way that makes heaven feel a million miles distant. Everyday choices to let people in (or not), ask for help (or not), show (or not show) your not-worked-out, not-figured out, not-gotten-over become muscle memory. That’s why walls between us and people quickly become walls between us and God.

When our feet are planted on I’ve-Got-This, prayer can feel like tossing a frisbee over a security fence while blindfolded. We don’t know where we’re aiming. Aside from perhaps a clang or thud, we also don’t know whether the frisbee landed in grass, someone’s hand, or a flower pot.

We pray sporadic at best. Mostly when we’re really desperate.

Maybe it would startle us a little if God actually responded. Maybe we want to be startled. Because we’re still tossing out prayers as if there’s Someone ready to catch, even if we can’t see Him.

You might be here because you’ve flung enough despairing prayers.

Thrown your voice to the wind and seen no evidence that it reached God’s ears.

Prayed less than you think you should.

Worried you haven’t prayed right, and that’s why God’s ignoring you.

Glad you’re here. Welcome, friend. You’re not alone. You just can’t see it from where you’re standing.

God’s-Got-Me Ground

You and I are both invited to stand on a different plot of land. This one’s named God’s-Got-Me. It’s a restful place where you’re immersed in peace you can almost taste. Joy that trails happy tears down your lifted face.

Here you’re known. Loved. Chosen.

Gone is the push-hard pace. The vying to be accepted—respected. The unsettling feeling that you’re really not in control of your life. Gone is the worry that you’ll fail or someone will find out. Gone are heartbreaks you’ve been shouldering solo.

You no longer have to try to fix it, be somebody, make it happen.

The things that make you tough on the outside grow faint as God’s love penetrates to the places that hurt the most.

There’s no distance between you and God when you pray. So you hold hope and unknown, gratitude and petition in cupped hands. Place them in the giant hands of God. Press your ear against His heart and listen.

You know not only where God is—next to you—but what He’s like. That’s why you know He hears you every time we pray, even when His good heart knows the hard answer will pan out to be best.

Sometimes I Settle

I’ve stood on both squares of ground, sometimes on the same day. I’m one to pick back up what I just left in God’s hands, as if I can be the “answer to my own prayers,” like Mary Demuth discloses in her book Everything (pg. 7). Put Band-Aids on what God’s still healing. Spin toward the things I can create, solve, or control, then forget that God’s still near, just behind me.

Mary puts her finger on another truth I’ve wrestled with too: “God’s nearness and the growth that happens in His light comes from the very things we desire to flee” (Everything, pg. xiii). And I’ve tasted enough light to know that though it sears and purifies, I wouldn’t trade it for a me-controlled life. I want to plant my feet on God’s-Got-Me ground and stay there.

You too?

Let’s talk about how we get there, and how we stay there.

How To Know Where Your Prayers Will Land

1. Spend time with God for no reason other than to get to know Him.

My favorite way to do this is on my knees before the sun wakes up since I’m less distracted that time of day. I turn worship music loud in my Beats and just listen. Sometimes I whisper praise aloud. Often I cry.

I also make a morning practice of seeking God with an open Bible and pen in hand. Scripture is inspired by God, and lingering with words from and about Him teaches me more about His heart.

Getting to know God might look different for you, and that’s okay. The point is to spend time seeking. Coming close because there’s nowhere you’d rather be.

2. Get honest with God about what you’re trying to Band-Aid, answer on your own, do without Him.

This could look like journaling, or a heart-to-heart with God while you walk, swing, swim, climb rocks, sit with your face tipped up towards the sun. Come as you are with your own words. There’s no formula. Just be honest.

When you pray, come as you are with your own words. There’s no formula. Just be honest.

We’ll stay on I’ve-Got-This ground until we’re ready to let God into the mess and still-in-progress of our lives. It’s hard to face ourselves square in the mirror. But a habit of vulnerability with God keeps our hearts soft and our vision clear.

Keep pressing in because you’re creating muscle memory. I believe that’s why King David, a man with dark secrets and a slew of faults, was still called a man after God’s own heart (1 Sam. 13:14). He didn’t stay away when he went astray. He knew the nature of God’s heart, and when his own was misaligned. And he knew the close-to-God place required nothing standing between him and God.

3. Find a friend to keep you accountable.

It’s often said that without accountability, we don’t change. It’s that uncomfortable truth we’d rather ignore. But we also overlook the gift that this level of knowing and being known is.

Deep down, I think we want it.

Jennie Allen says it this way in Find Your People:

When we don’t have a village of interconnected, consistent teammates in our lives, we feel invisible, and when we are left alone and unbothered, we become the worst version of ourselves. Whether it is neighbors, or mentors, or grandparents, or our closest friends, we need people who see us. Who call us up and out.
pgs. 125-126

I’ve found that practicing vulnerability with God makes it easier to lose the pride and be real with other people. In the same vein, cultivating deep friends with a handful of neighbors is one of the best decisions I’ve made. The people in close proximity to you can make the best accountability partners.

This is the prayer on my heart for you right now.

May you know that God’s waiting and willing to be found by you.

May you find that He’s a safe place to spill all the raw, honest stuff on your mind.

May you find people near you to know you and love you enough to point you back to Jesus.

Just a friend over here in your corner,

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