When You Don't Mean What You Pray

I’ve skipped the past two weeks of healing. Yesterday was the last day of week three. I still had time to spend. I still had an hour to spare. I was tired. I woke up early all week and learned to pray. I learned its importance. I learned its power. I learned God does not answer unless we ask, and this is because if we are not asking God, we are asking something else. Why would God answer when we pray to Artemis, power, money, time, intellect, logic, friends, food, entertainment, or any other thing? If we pray to Artemis and see an answer, we continue praying to Artemis. If we continue praying to Artemis we die. God does not want us to die. He wants us to live with Him because He knows that is best for us. 

I came home last night after Crashed Ice and lay in bed.

“King Jesus, my body is tired. I don’t want to put in the effort to heal right now. And I know it’s killing me. And I need to heal. And I don’t have what it takes.” Actually, I said something much less eloquent with not nearly as much sincerity and was really just looking for a way to shirk my responsibilities. So I asked Jesus to heal me in my sleep. Through dreams. I hoped he would do the work. And because my motives were so selfish and my words so insincere I didn’t really believe he would do anything.

But he did.

I dreamed of strongholds. I told a woman to pray against spiritual strongholds of darkness because whatever she did to change her son’s actions would amount to nothing. Her son’s actions grew out of the stronghold in his heart, and Jesus was the only one who could destroy such a stronghold.

I dreamed I had a plan to hike to this amazing place but got distracted by something much less interesting along the way.

I dreamed of a dark space fortress standing on the outskirts of the atmosphere. The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, if the space fortress is not within the limits of the earth, does it belong to God? There were eggs. Half were pure and had been stolen. Half had been grown through long ages of perversion and hatred. Each pure stolen egg was placed in a nest next to a perverted egg. The two eggs would hatch together and what once was good would be seduced to evil. In this dark fortress I wandered and came face to face with the lord of the fortress. I don’t remember if I called out to Jesus, but He came and stood between me and my foe.

I dreamed of a place on earth where judgment was cast. It was a place under the dominion of darkness, but we were operating under the Kingdom of Light, and we did not cast judgments without our Father’s will.

So yes, King Jesus answered my prayers even when I didn’t really quite mean them. And he answered your prayers. I may have skipped three weeks of healing, but I did not skip the fourth. I woke up with these dreams this morning and took them before God. I learned truth from them and took them seriously. So I thank you. Thank you for praying for me. Your prayers have power. Your prayers are heard. Your prayers are important. Without them, I don’t know how long I would have gone without pursuing healing once again.

Things to pray for:

I started the week really well with prayer, but as the days wore on I fell back into old silent habits. Please pray that I will be compelled to pray and not simply inspired.

Because God has used the last month or so to impress upon me the power and importance of prayer, I have been going around to a lot of strangers and gleaning prayer requests. This is scary. And I haven’t even attempted the scariest parts of this job. Please pray for courage. Please pray for partners to come with me. Please pray that I would follow through when God prompts me to do something and not shrink back into a place of insignificant safety. I want to do the work of God. I don’t want to stand on the sidelines. I want to die in the battlefield like my King did. Please pray that I would have follow-through. I’m really good at starting things and not finishing them.