listen, leave, trust...

Not a day goes by when you don't hear of someone talking about praying or someone (maybe ourselves) asking for or promising to pray. Proverbs 28 has an interesting statement to make about prayer..."9 God has no use for the prayers of the people who won’t listen to him."
So unless our prayers are a conversation that involves us listening to what God says and what he has written down for us our prayers are not much more than an attempt at self-medication.
One of the biggest hindrances to having a two-sided conversation with God, is that we do not want to deal with the brutal honest truth about who we are on a heart level. 13 You can’t whitewash your sins and get by with it; you find mercy by admitting and leaving them. You cannot expect your relationship with God to grow or move forward if you have sin in your life that you haven't admitted and left.

What is your whitewashed sin? Find someone you trust...tell them. James says, that we move forward in our journey by confessing our sins one to another. So tell...someone you trust, and be smart about it. Foolishness is blabbering it to the wrong person. Anyway, confess it to a trusted friend / mentor, confess it to God...and move on. Give that someone permission to kick you in the middle (if you're a guy) if needed to keep you moving on.

Until your relationship is moving forward, you are merely grasping for hope and that leads to trouble. You don't need to grasp...you need to a foundation / relationship to trust in. 25 A grasping person stirs up trouble, but trust in God brings a sense of well-being.

(my prayer) Father, still my heart to listen. Bring to my attention the whitewashed fortresses in my heart, and allow me to move from where I am (grasping) to living a life built on consistent trust in you.

Chris -