By Meghan DeWalt
The toddler carries over the same board book I’ve read thrice within an hour. The husband pops out of his office to check in, ask a question, and get some food. The clock ticks as the day ramps up, and the paying work needing to be done begins to war with the lists I have going to keep body, soul, and home together.
When mornings like these occur, I often shove aside my Bible and quiet time companion, sling back my coffee with a sigh, and pitch any desire to pray out the window. I think most of you can relate to similar moments within your unique context. So I’ll encourage you with what I have to encourage myself in:
Pray what you got.
These four words I extend to you are not mine, but an impassioned, often-given encouragement from one of our favorite pastors and authors, Tim Keller. My husband spent an entire year after he was saved listening to all the content he could find from Tim Keller. Needless to say, today, we quote him often.
Pray what you got.
Four simple words I struggle to remember. Four short words laced with utter simplicity that seems too good to be true, doesn't it?
Pray what you got.
This is for the hard days, the happy days, the sad days, the scattered thoughts, the sleepless nights, and the exhausted days. This is for the overwhelmed, no margin, repentant, struggling, and the burdened.
To pray what you got is engaging in honest communication with our Lord. Praying what you got removes the pressure we put on ourselves of the acceptable words, best cadence, and thoroughness of our prayers to God.
Praying what you got is desperation. And in our desperate moments, we are humbled. And when we are humbled we are strengthened by Love Himself.
So pray what you got. Pray acrostic patterns (I.e: ACTS: Adore, Confess, Thank, Supplication). Pray with pen and paper. Pray in breaths. Only make it your aim to talk to God ever increasingly. Because you’re His daughter, and He wants to hear it all from you.
Not to mention we have two-thirds of the Trinity interceding for us at all times. Let THAT sink in to lift the guilt-ridden pressure over your prayer life so you can keep talking to the Lord! There is not even a chance of God misunderstanding or misinterpreting us. What utter security we have in this when all we can manage in prayer are half-finished sentences, or one word, “Help.”
Pray what you have, friends. The Lord hears.
