Signs You Are Praying Out Of Fear Rather Than Faith

There are many different kinds of prayer and today I want to address the prayers in which we ask God to take action and control over an area of our lives or the lives of others. More specifically I want to address the basis of why we pray those prayers of petition and intercession (which is faith) and shine a light on the patterns of obsessive prayer and feeling very fearful after prayer (which has the basis of fear).

Fear is not a wrong motive to pray, but we must also trust God with what we fear and live out that trust. After a prayer is said a question arises, “Do I trust that God really heard me?” And of course the enemy is eager to challenge you in this way, “Did God really hear you…?”

I love the LORD because he 
hears my voice 
and my prayer for mercy. 
Because he bends down to listen, 
I will pray 
as long as I have breath! 

Psalms 116:1-2 NLT

Prayer is a great way to commune with God and is directly connected to our faith in him. It requires faith to believe that God actually hears, listens and has the power to answer. True prayer requires faith and is an expression of faith. It is a manifestation of faith and it builds our faith. It is an action to be done regardless of how God will respond to our prayer and is central to our relationship with him. It’s an act that also requires humility. God’s will matters more than our personal will. Nonetheless, he is an amazing God who considers our prayers thoughtfully and hears us.

How often you pray can show you a lot of things. Praying often is a very good thing; however, I believe you can pray too often about a specific thing because you are being controlled by your fears and so it becomes an obsession. When this happens you might be anxious that God isn’t hearing you so you feel you have to pray more and more frequently.

This is a wrong approach to prayer because then you are putting the burden on yourself rather than God. In those moments you are believing that the number of times you pray will result in an answer rather than believing in God to answer. You begin to believe God’s delay in responding means you just have to pray more often and/or more powerful prayers. Especially when you have no way of seeing that God is working or not, you can begin to doubt. Faith is believing without seeing (Hebrews 11:1). Pray often, but be beware of praying too compulsively about the same thing out of fear instead with faith.

I realized I had this problem when God asked me to pray for a specific person that had been in my life for a brief time. As the months went on I prayed for this person and continued to do so more and more frequently, but I was praying out of many fears that God didn’t care or actually wasn’t listening or wasn’t doing a single thing. I had no way of seeing if God was answering my prayers and I struggled to believe that God was hearing me at all. The more I prayed the more anxious and fearful I became. I actual began to feel guilty if I went a single day without praying for this person. Some days I prayed 2 or 3 times. It got so bad I had to stop and realize the problem! My prayer was full of fear and lacked faith in my God.

If I truly believed God was hearing me, why was I feeling so afraid after praying and so compelled to increase the number of times I prayed for this person? I was beginning to doubt God and so I was struggling to pray with faith. After some time of not praying for them, I began to pray for this person again, but this time was whole-heartedly trusting God to hear and releasing the matter into his powerful hands with each single prayer I said. No longer did it matter the number of prayers I said or how long they were or how “powerful” the words I used were. I simply believed God had heard me each and every time. It was then I actually began to smile after praying. Continuing prayer is a good and beautiful thing when there is whole-hearted faith and trust in him.

Believe me when I say, from my own experience God is willing to answer even if you pray about something only once. The key is believing. The key is faith. God hears us from the very first time we ever prayed about a certain situation, person, or establishment. When we pray with faith we are actually able to get up and feel at peace afterwards because we trust God heard. This is what believing prayer looks like and a great example for us is found in the first chapter of first Samuel. Hannah prayed a tearful, broken-hearted prayer for a son in God’s temple and “she went back and began to eat again, and she was no longer sad” (1 Samuel 1:18 NLT).

How you feel after you pray can show you a lot of things. Hannah prayed and was at peace. She was no longer sad because she believed that God had heard that prayer she prayed. Her subsequent actions demonstrate her trust. Praying with faith is a surrendering to God. There is a time to pray and then there’s a time to get up and believe and trust regardless of how God might answer or how long he might take to answer. Trust because he heard.

God hears our every prayer and loves us very much. He even hears the prayers we say where we stumble over our words and struggle with what to say exactly. We can surrender what we pray about to God and trust him because he is good and gracious in all his ways and loves us as a good Father loves his child.

The Lord is close to all who call on him, 
yes, to all who call on him in truth.
He grants the desires of those who fear him;
he hears their cries for help and rescues them.

Psalms 145:18-19 NLT

God’s will above our own. For He is worthy of our trust. Forever. Amen