Hey, So whenever I pray, often I will end up not feeling genuine when I pray and I don’t feel God when I pray and then I panic and end up basically trying to force my emotions to “feel right” and I repeat my words over and over and over again. It’s so frustrating and I want to stop but it’s hard. Does anyone have any tips on breaking this?
Dont search to feel Christ. Knowing Him is complete abandonment. Even from your own “feelings” or awareness of His presence. My prayer life took off when I started to be authentic with my words. Instead of repeating phrases or trying to sound semi beautiful I would start to pray authentically what I am actually struggling with. Like “God I am struggling with ocd and repetitively trying to feel right. Lord allow me to just be in your presence and trust that even when I dont feel youre presence, youre closer than ever. Help me to trust your words that tell those who are weary and burdened to come to you and help me to lay all of my burdens down at your feet, even the darkest ones that seem furthest from your goodness. God save me in my wretchedness and calm the storm in my life. Amen:)” An authentic prayer like that does away with “feeling just right.” Like if Jesus was standing in front of you in the flesh, you wouldn’t be trying to feel His presence. At least I wouldn’t. Id more-so be concerned with being brutally honest about the state of my life and just wanting Him to do with me as He pleased. Another thing you can do is start writing your prayers. That helped me to not get lost in the ruminations or intrusive thoughts. Writing your prayers helps you to stay focused on the writing:) God speaks through me better like that too
That's all very true. I want to focus more on being honest. I might try writing down my prayers and that prayer sounds good. Thank you so much <3
Sometimes, anxiety can hijack people’s perceptions of their ability to feel God—like from a physical and mental perspective. This is well documented in mental health research. I believe that our bodies and spirits are infinitely intimately intertwined. Not *feeling* God doesn’t mean something is wrong with you or that God has left you!! Repeating isn’t going to make you feel God if anxiety is keeping you from physically feeling it. In this anxious state, forcing emotions to “feel right” just can’t work. A tip is to acknowledge that you may not *feel* God, but there’s many ways he can speak to you. Before I learned this, I was so frustrated that I couldn’t feel God. I felt like I was doing everything right. I was upset, and I said the angriest prayer I’ve ever said. I said, “Heavenly Father, why have you left me? What use is a God that doesn’t care about his children? How do you expect me to know you’re real and really there?” I felt guilty for being angry during a prayer, thinking I was going to be punished, and was going re-pray, but I had 2 friends stop by unannounced. After talking for a bit about random stuff, one of my friends got really silent for a while, and then he spoke up and said, “I feel impressed to tell you that God wants you to know he is real, I don’t know why I felt that, but I thought I’d tell you.” Tears came to my eyes. It made me realize that prayers don’t have to be picture-perfect for God to hear and answer them. Even when I’m angry and can’t physically feel God, he’s still there listening. I was sure I was going to get punished for not saying a “just right” prayer and for not feeling “just right” feelings. Instead, I was blessed with a message I knew was directly from Heavenly Father, letting me know He was with me, even when I couldn’t feel it myself. So my tip is, don’t overanalyse not feeling “just right” about feeling God. Sometimes, we just can’t feel Him, and that’s just a fact of our mortal bodies. Idk why. It just is. We know from scriptures tho that God doesn’t abandon His children; He’ll find other ways to speak to us beyond feeling “just right.”
@24ozpersephonenoice What a beautiful testimony! I will definitely keep this in mind. He really is good and kind. I feel like God has been showing me recently that I don’t have to feel a certain way about prayer and that He’s a real God and He is real with us. It’s certainly relieving. This is so good. Thank you for the advice and for sharing this beautiful story!
@Kruisergirl You’re so right. Thanks for listening.
Hmm I went agnostic?
Does anyone struggle with intrusive thoughts that tell you that you want to do sins and I try to block them out but my anxiety has been so high I haven’t slept. The trigger words come to me while I’m trying to sleep and turn my brain off
TW religious ocd OCD is turning innapropriate desires into prayers. Essentially the best way I can describe it is everyone has innapropriate desires sometimes. One example is if I’m suicidal, I wouldn’t mind if a meteor hit while I was asleep. Obviously that affects other people too, but if it’s not my fault, selfishly I want it. Well, it essentially turns that “I want this” thought into me thinking towards god “this would be nice if it happens.” Especially if it wasn’t my fault at all, I wouldn’t mind. My brain can VERY easily turn that into a prayer. All I have to do is direct it for a second towards god, and boom, technically it’s a prayer. Has anyone else had this? It really seems like ocd, even if it is VERY technically a prayer. It doesn’t seem like a normal, thought out prayer
im scared. I keep compulsively praying for bad things or death on the people I love. I don’t understand why. It doesn’t make anything better. I’m scared that these prayers count. I seal them as I do with most of my prayers in Jesus name and with a double amen. I’m scared God will want to teach me a lesson and make something come true. I’m scared I mean these prayers, I’m petrified. If something happened, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself :( I don’t know where to go from here
Hello all. I'm new here. I've been having a horrendous time trying to beat repentance prayers. Please if you have advice I'm desperate. The things I'm fighting are: - "feelings" that I did something wrong - actually doing something wrong but not being able to pray quickly - rituals having to do with feet movements, hand movements, where I'm facing when I pray
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