Be Honest With God

 

I think most people tend to put their “best foot forward” when they pray. I know I do. I try to say the “right” things and make sure that what I say is proper and adequately “spiritual.” The reality is that there’s nothing wrong with praying that way. In fact, I think that it actually shows a good amount of healthy respect for the act you are partaking in: approaching and conversing with the Author and Creator of the Universe, the Almighty God. However, I think that feeling like you have to pray that way is an indication of something else: that you don’t have a complete picture of what you are doing when you pray. 

When my boys come to speak to me, I don’t require (or want) them to come to me formally and ritualistically. I want them to come to me casually, comfortably, and with whatever thought, complaint, issue, or request they have. They have free reign to come to me however they want, whenever they want, and to say whatever they want (within reason, of course). They don’t have to feel like in order to speak to me they have to say the right things or come to me at certain times or with specific routines or rituals. They know that I’m open and available whenever, wherever, and that’s how it should be. A father that requires that type of communication with his children would be considered harsh, unemotional, and unloving. So then why do we feel that way when we come to God?

Like I said, I think it comes from a good place. We want to respect who God is and His authority and might, so we come to Him with reverence and honor. But we don’t have to. We can come to Him anywhere, anytime, and in any way, and He will receive us with open arms, ready to listen. 

This should free us up to approach God with confidence and with honesty and openness. We shouldn’t feel like we have to say the right things all the time, we can be “real” with God and express ourselves honestly. King David did that very thing all the time. When you have the time, go read Psalms 3, 11, 13, 22, and 44. In each of these Psalms, David is critical of God because He isn’t meeting David’s expectations. While this isn’t exactly the attitude we should have in speaking to God, it reveals something very important that we can learn: it’s okay to speak our true feelings honestly with God. We don’t have to “sugarcoat” things or come at God with kid gloves. He can handle our confusion, wrath, and disappointment. 

God wants to know the deepest, darkest recesses of our hearts and how we truly feel about Him, ourselves, the world, etc. So why would we ever think to keep our true feelings and thoughts from Him? We should all take a lesson from David, and have more confidence to be honest with God. He wants it from us, and He will use that honesty to grow us and teach us things we never would have learned if we had kept it to ourselves.