Prayers that Help, Prayers that Hinder

All prayer should be good, shouldn’t it?  Yes, in the aspect of prayer as a relational connection with God.  However, many survivors look to written prayers to help them.  I am really grateful for Jo Getzinger’s prayer books (Prayer Warriors and Prayer Warriors 2).  The prayers feel more personable and include our parts.  Written prayers can be helpful as a prompt or to cover things we hadn't thought of. She is clear in the introduction that just because you pray these prayers doesn’t mean things are “fixed” because parts may not be in agreement, etc.  I really appreciated that, although I admit, I didn’t like it.  We’d all like the “magic” prayer that fixes everything!

I know in the beginning of my journey, I downloaded and bought lots of prayers and tried to go through as many of them as I could because I felt so desperate to “fix things”.  But the reality is they didn’t work because prayer is not “magic words.”  I cringe when I hear prayer ministers just promoting “We’ve got a prayer for that.”  It gives the false illusion to survivors that if you just say this prayer everything will work out.  It is possible to feel some relief and like we “did’ something, but it might not have really helped and it might have hindered.

When we pray those kinds of prayers in that way, it really is a form of witchcraft.  My efforts.  A magic formula.  Sounds cult-like doesn’t it?  I want to be clear that I’m all for prayer and believe it is an essential part of healing – but as a conversation between us and God that is relational, not magic words, not self-effort. 

Mind control programming is broken when the parts no longer believe or are accessed by the program.  This cannot be done through a simple prayer (unless God chooses to do a sovereign miracle, which He can!).  Most of the time, it is a process of working with our parts gently to see the program for what it is, see the lies and the truth and make a choice for truth with God and then walk it out, which can be up and down for a while.  I can’t control parts or make them do what I want.  That is not relational.  It is cult like.  Our God gives us freedom to choose.  Our parts hold fragments of our will.  He stands at the door and knocks.  It doesn’t happen through saying certain words and that’s it. 

How do you engage with prayer?  Is it a relational connection or rote words?  I know I need to be reminded of this, because sometimes I’m tempted to pull out a written prayer and just say it to “make sure” I covered something.  Let’s communicate with God, ask questions, hear His voice speaking tenderly to us.  If He says to do a written prayer, great, but let’s do it relationally and with feeling, at His direction.  This is so much better!