Episode #235 Prayer Without Pressure: Simple Ways to Connect with God All Day Long – Small Steps, Big Faith

Hey friends, it's Jen and welcome to this episode of Good God Talks. Today we're talking with God about ways to keep talking with him as we go about our day to day lives, because as we all know, that can be harder than we'd like to think.

As believers who get to experience life with God, as we all do, we want to grow in this habit of going through our days with God.

And so I want to share with you some practical ways to talk with God as you go throughout your day based on a passage from 1 Thessalonians, and so I'll read 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 for us. It says,

“Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.”

Now, if you're familiar with these verses, you might be feeling some kind of way about the words that I just read for us.

I have really struggled with this three-verse passage of scripture in the past because frankly, it felt impossible.

How was I going to rejoice always when there were circumstances in my life that I was not joyful about?

How was I going to pray continually when I also needed to work and live and sleep and engage in relationships with friends and family?

How was I going to give thanks in all circumstances when I faced so many circumstances that I was not thankful for?

And I would struggle with this because the passage tells us this is God's will for you. We all want to know God's will. We want to know what his best is for our lives.

But reading these verses, walking out this aspect of God's will for me felt impossible.

Well, if you feel that way about these verses right now, or if you felt this way in the past, I want to share some encouragement with you. These are all interconnected practices and they're designed to grow naturally from our walks with God.

Joy springs up through prayer and gratitude.

And prayer fuels both joy and gratitude.

And gratitude deepens joy and prompts us with a desire to pray and it's actually a really great practice to express gratitude in our prayers.

And so all three of these are interconnected and we can do them in response to who God is, not dependent on or in response to our circumstances.

If your history with these verses, or your life with God right now, resembles mine in this season or past ones, you might be familiar with some of the burdens that I have carried. I had guilt and shame when it felt like I couldn't muster up joy or gratitude when I went through painful things. I felt like I had to be joy-filled and grateful for every circumstance.

Like I needed to find a way to be grateful for something that was causing me pain or harm or even was outright sinful. I felt pressure to suppress my real, genuine emotions. I would feel overwhelmed, thinking I had to maintain this rigid uninterrupted prayer routine, even when my life was so full. I kind of thought of prayer as needing to be a certain way or look like a certain thing or last a specific amount of time. I felt like God's love was conditional and like I needed to behave perfectly in order to access it And to be living within his will.

If you can relate to any of those things. I want to encourage you today. None of those burdens were true.

The truth instead is that these verses encourage cultivating an attitude of joy and prayer and gratitude. And those things rely on God's presence, not on our circumstances.

God doesn't expect us to fake feelings, but to invite him into our present reality, no matter what we feel, and to trust him to provide joy and peace, and to open our eyes to ways that he is working, that we can be grateful for him, even in the midst of hard circumstances.

God invites me and you to give thanks in all circumstances, not for all circumstances.

Even in bad circumstances that God would not want for us but may be a product of living in a fallen world—there are still ways that we can grow in gratitude for God and who he is and what he's doing and how he's caring for us in the midst of those circumstances.

And we don't need to fake our awareness of them. We can ask him to open our eyes. And to help us experience thankfulness and gratitude. Prayer is an ongoing conversation that you get to have with God as you go throughout your day. That's part of what we're doing here on the podcast.

We're growing in that habit of talking with God all the time. And that includes quick prayers in the middle of chaos, or silent thoughts that are directed to him, or breath prayers as we've talked about earlier in this series, and even just quick moments of silently sitting in God's presence and being aware of Him there.

God's will is about your relationship with Him, not your performance.

Through Christ, you're empowered to grow in these practices, not to meet a standard, but to experience deeper intimacy as you go about your life with him.

And so my encouragement for you today is to look again at these verses from a different perspective and to look at your life and the things that are going on in your world and to look for how you can rejoice and how you can pray, and how you can give thanks at any moment.

And here's a question that you can take to God today:

God, I believe this is your will for me. How can I practice this in my circumstances today?

Have a good talk.

And if you've been encouraged by this content, please share it with a friend and help them grow in their conversational relationship with God too!

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