Are you breaking promises without realizing it?

Saying you will pray for someone is a promise.

When I first realized this and started applying it to my life, it was eye-opening, and very humbling. I saw just how human and flawed I was, and struggled with that reality.

The moment of my conviction came out of nowhere one day… there was no warning or gentle guidance. Just bam.

I had gotten a text that said “Thank you so much for your prayers!”

To be honest, when I read that I didn’t even remember what their prayer request was. I had to go back and look, and realized it was a pretty significant request.

I can’t even begin to tell you the shame I felt in that moment.

There was an instant and desperate need to change that came from deep within me; this is conviction. It has been a long journey in both changing my habits and processing the new perspectives I am learning from these changes.

It still is a journey at times, to be honest, but when you’re convicted to change something in your life and you don’t ignore the prompting of the Holy Spirit, it simply becomes a part of the new you.

That is why I’ve taken so long to write about these changes in my life. Ultimately, I realized there is no way to describe the impact, but I want to share a few things that are honest and encouraging.

That was when God knew I was ready to hear Him, and I listened.

Comparing the “before” and “after” me, I can see that I had a mindset that many of us do to some degree, and we might not be aware we are prioritizing things in the wrong way.

We tend to push prayer requests off “for later” and not prioritize them. Yet, at the same time, we’re still sending out and receiving prayer requests and expecting they will result in prayers.

We all need to trust that at least a little time each day will be devoted to intercessory prayer.

But yet, here I was staring at a text from a good friend and I didn't even remember what they asked me to pray for one day earlier.

That was the trap I let myself fall into “without even realizing it.”

I felt guilt, shame, and embarrassment. Then I even stupidly attempted to justify my lack of follow through to myself. Yeah, God didn’t appreciate that, but neither did I. I was attempting to fool myself into thinking I was doing ok, when in reality, I simply wasn’t.

I know there are countless others who recognize this as a problem. But some haven’t yet, or are only on the verge of realizing what it means when we say “I’m praying for you.” We should be sharing our stories on the beauty and duty of prayer.

God graced me with that very well-placed slap on the head that day.

It was painful, and it was awful on many levels. He showed me what I was doing in a split second. I was a hypocrite, a liar, and also too self-conscious about prayer. I discovered that one a little later on in this journey.

But I knew that I was in the wrong and there was no way to get around what I had been doing and not doing. I was breaking promises. It is no different than telling a friend you’ll come over and help them with something and then just not showing up without even respecting them enough to let them know.

I cried and asked for forgiveness and sought His help to be better.

I won’t lie. It does take intentional practice to shift from a habit of waiting to pray, to remembering to actually pray.

Faith is active, prayer is active, belief is active; I was not being active, I was not putting the world aside and lifting someone up to God. This may sound strange, but it takes less energy and time to pray for someone, asking God to intervene, than it does to help them after the fact.

I figured out and prepared for this one right away.

It’s like when you’re all gung-ho to start exercising. Then, a week or two in, you start coming up with excuses that your brain desperately wants to make valid and legit, but deep down you know they aren’t.

A few other things I’ve learned since that day.

• A prayer doesn’t have to be on bended knee, long, or “perfect” with fancy words, just sincere and with full faith in God.

• I don’t care anymore if I’m in the middle of doing something with people around me. I close my eyes and lift them up in prayer, and when someone asks what’s up, I tell them the truth. I was praying for someone. Be bold and courageous in your faith.

• Here’s a really neat thing — Once you pray, you remember their prayer request better. It’s like when you meet someone and say their name, so next time you have a better chance of remembering their name. Discovered the same happens for prayers.

• Some days are better at remembering the details than others, and that’s ok. Perhaps you won’t remember every prayer request for weeks on end. There is an ebb and flow, and we have only so much memory.

• You will fail at this sometimes; you will backslide and forget, but keep moving forward with this new chapter of your faith.

  
  

When we say we are going to pray for someone, we are making an intimate promise to that person, with God as our witness.

There’s so much more that will come of this than any article I could write. Each of us has our own journey, and your prayer life as a whole, and your relationship with others and God will grow beautifully from keeping your promises.

Prioritize and set the world aside when you say to someone you will pray for them. Because God has kept every promise He has ever made to us, we should be keeping ours as well.

First Published in Biblical Christian Worldview on Medium.

© Jane Isley

By: Jacob Berghoef