Emotional Maturity In Prayer

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How’s your prayer? Is it dead earnest and with rending of heart – in deepest, intense feeling? Don’t mistake this for thoughtless and uncontrolled emotion! This is full mental realization of purpose – of need – seeking God with all our strength and might.

Scripture shows that we can pray with superficial emotion, and not the type that God wants (Hos. 7:14). The Moffat version translates this scripture as: “They never put their hearts into their prayers.” This shows that we can have three states of emotional immaturity in our prayer:

1. Emotion getting the better of us.
2. Suffocating emotion because we’re afraid to feel anything.
3. Being indifferent altogether.

God desires proper, thought driven and earnest emotion. He doesn’t want fake emotions or those tied up somewhere else. And He certainly does not appreciate  prayer with absolutely no personality or enthusiasm.

Prayers need to be intense – surrendered and yielded to the great God in tears. The example was set for us in Heb. 5:7 where it says: “In the days of His flesh Christ offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears…” These were His prayers throughout His human life – not just on his last night!

God has graciously granted, by astonishing miracles, many answers to earnest prayers. But Christians will receive no real answer except this prayer comes earnestly from the heart. Casual, routine prayers will never get through to God – will receive no answer – because they are a matter of duty and without feeling or emotion. Perhaps this makes plain the reason why most people have never received an answer in their prayers.

Prayers need to have motivation and emotional connection to God.  Passion, enthusiasm and compassion for others  must fill prayer life. This is the prayer of the emotionally grown-up. It expresses gratitude and joy for self, mercy and sympathy for others, reverence and adoration in worship of God.

“Groanings which cannot be uttered are often prayers which cannot be refused.” – C. H. Spurgeon. You can feel the emotional connection and expression in prayer if your whole being is in touch with God. Even though the emotion is a physical reaction, it accompanies or reacts from true, spiritual experience.