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Can You Talk to God Without Praying? · Arise Women of God

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  Have you ever been in the middle of a chaotic day?
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  Maybe you're folding laundry, driving to work, or dealing with a difficult toddler or co worker and you find yourself having a conversation with God in your head.
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  You might wonder, does this even count?
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  Is he actually part of my internal monologue or is he only available to me when I'm on my knees?
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  Today we are answering the question can can I talk to God without praying?
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  And by the end of today's episode, you will understand that any connection with the divine is in fact a prayer, whether it has words that you're speaking or not.
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  We're going to help you solve the pain of spiritual guilt by showing you how to turn your everyday thoughts into holy ground and how the Spirit can untangle your heart when you don't even have the words that to
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  speak.
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  We're moving from formal duty to constant companionship.
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  Stay tuned.
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  Ordinary women, Extraordinary faith When God calls, we say yes.
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  The Arise Women of God Podcast hello and welcome to another episode of the Arise Women of God podcast.
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  I'm your host, Tamara K.
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  Anderson, and joining me today is Wendy Christensen, my co founder of Women warriors of Light, an amazing Christian counselor and social worker.
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  And today, today we are defining what it means to be in a state of prayer.
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  First, we'll discuss why every heartfelt connection is a prayer and how God is always tuning in to your internal channel.
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  Second, I'll share about spur of the moment prayers, those five second cries for help in the middle of a hard conversation that usually produce quick answers.
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  Third, Wendy explains the produce manager analogy why it's okay to take your anger and frustration directly to the man in charge.
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  And finally, we'll explore the wordless groanings of the spirit, what to do when your heart is too heavy for elegant sentences.
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  But first, let's kick it off by talking about defining the connection and prayer.
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  Oh, absolutely.
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  You can talk to God without praying.
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  And honestly, I think it's actually a prayer in your heart.
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  I think you, you are when you're having conversations with him, even if it's, hey, it's been a really hard day.
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  I'm so overwhelmed.
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  Can I just sit in your presence for a minute?
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  Can I just sit in the peace and the calm and.
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  Or if we're angry like this is hard, I don't get it.
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  It's unfair.
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  I think that is a prayer.
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  Believe it or not, I think those conversations are prayers.
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  When you are connected with him.
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  I think it can be holy ground when you kneel down and you pray.
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  You know, if you're going to say your nighttime prayers, morning prayers, or we say a family prayer or blessing your food prayers.
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  Like there's prayers all throughout the day that we do, and we just don't realize that that's a prayer.
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  But it's.
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  I think it's.
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  Any connection with him is a prayer.
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  So maybe it's just defining it a little bit differently, because I absolutely believe that you can talk to God anytime, any moment that you have during the day, you can connect and talk to Him.
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  Any connection is prayer.
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  I love that it takes the pressure off having to be perfect before we speak.
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  And sometimes I found that some of my most powerful experiences happen right in the heat of the moment when I'm desperate for the right words to say to a friend or a child.
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  I absolutely believe that you can talk to God anytime, any moment that you have during the day, you can connect and talk to him.
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  I 100% agree.
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  I think some of the bestest prayers are those ones that are just spur of the moment.
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  The ones that are particularly heard and answered, at least for me, are when I'm interacting with, say, a child or a friend in a situation.
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  And what they're sharing with me is hard and heavy.
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  And I'm like, dear Lord, I have no words.
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  What do I even say here?
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  Like.
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  Like, what would be something good for me to say in this instance?
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  I don't want to mess it up, you know?
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  And it's so interesting that often if we've been having a conversation up to that point and we're not getting anywhere, it's like, what do I say?
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  What.
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  What can I say to move us through to some kind of idea or resolution?
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  And those prayers that are just in my mind are answered so quickly.
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  And I'll often sit back afterwards and just go, how did those words even come out of my mouth?
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  And I'm like, well, duh, you asked.
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  Ask and you shall receive.
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  You know, so, yes, we can talk to God without having some formal prayer.
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  He steps in exactly when we ask.
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  But sometimes we don't feel like asking very nicely.
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  There are times we feel very frustrated because life feels so unfair.
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  Wende has a great analogy that she's going to share about this experience.
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  You know, whether that's anger and frustration, like sometimes it's okay to vent, or I've thought about this a lot, like, why do we get angry at God?
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  And I think it's because when things are hard or difficult, you want to go talk to the person in charge.
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  You know, if you're at the grocery Store and something is wrong, like the produce is spoiled.
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  You want to go talk to the person in charge, hey, there's something wrong with your produce.
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  You need to change it.
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  You need to fix it, right?
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  And so who do we see is in charge here?
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  God.
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  So when we're angry or frustrated, we want to go talk to the guy in charge.
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  Hey, you need to fix this and change this.
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  And I think that's why, you know, we get angry.
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  But he's okay.
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  He can handle that anger and frustration.
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  He knows how to deal with it perfectly.
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  And I think if you, if you understand God's character.
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  So if you're struggling to pray with him and have conversations with him, study a little bit more, I would say, in the scriptures about his character.
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  Who is he and how does he.
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  I think you can study that through Christ too, right?
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  In the New Testament and how Christ interacts with people because he says what I do, what my.
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  My Father does.
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  But to understand them, study their character a little bit.
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  And I think as we come to understand their character, then we'll go, hey, it's okay.
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  If I'm angry or frustrated, he gets it, and he understands that.
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  And he can help me work through it and talk through it.
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  And sometimes I've done a lot of grief work with people, and sometimes, especially in grief, we get angry and we need to forgive God not because he's done anything wrong.
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  It's the cycle of life and things happen.
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  But it's the natural tendency of humans to get angry at Him.
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  And so if I can have the power of saying, oh, and I forgive you for taking so and so, or for having this thing happen, then it puts us back in that place to be able to continue that
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  relationship.
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  When we have a problem in our relationships, we go through what we call repair, right?
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  We.
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  We want to repair that relationship.
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  If I'm arguing with my spouse, then I.
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  We have an argument or a disagreement and miscommunication, we want to keep communicating and working through and repairing the relationship, we can always do that too, with Him.
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  If we're feeling distant or I'm not hearing or I'm struggling at any time, you can repair because he's always, always drawing near unto us.
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  It's us that steps away sometime, but we can always, at any point in time, draw near unto Him.
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  He wants us to continually draw near unto Him.
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  God can handle the repair.
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  Isn't that great to know?
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  But what about those days when you feel so broken and so exhausted that you don't even have words for the depth of the emotion that you're feeling.
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  You simply have a heavy heart.
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  There's a beautiful promise in Romans for these exact moments.
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  I've been sitting here thinking about, how do I talk to God?
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  And it is those thoughts in my mind.
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  But there are some times when there are no words and there is just so much emotion, and you're just like, here's what I'm feeling.
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  And a verse of Scripture came to mind as I was thinking, how do you even describe that?
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  And there's this beautiful verse In Romans, chapter 8, verse 26, that says, but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.
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  So basically, when you're in those moments where you want to pray but there are just no words, that sometimes it's like, here I don't have words for all the thoughts and feelings and emotions that I'm having right now.
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  And it's often because something is heavy and hard and super emotional.
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  And I love that verse that sometimes you don't even have to think the words.
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  You can just kind of visualize yourself handing all those thoughts and emotions to God and let the Spirit do the rest.
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  Let that spirit make intercession be the mediator between you and God at that point, because there are no words, and God understands that, too.
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  I actually had an experience with that yesterday, Tamara, where I just felt.
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  I don't know why I don't get into these emotional spots as often as I did, you know, years previous.
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  But I was feeling sadness and grief and trying to figure direction as a few things in my life and didn't really feel like I was getting any clear direction.
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  And I remember just doing that.
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  That exact thing, just praying in my heart.
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  Like, I didn't know how to put it in words because sometimes you don't know how to put it in this beautiful, elegant prayer.
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  And I remember just going, heavenly Father, I hope you can just sense and feel my heart, all the things that are on my heart right now and help me untangle them and get clarity and figure out what my
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  right next step is.
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  And then just to pause for a minute after that and just feel, yeah, he knows what's in your heart.
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  As I get clarity, I can start praying more specifically, because I do believe in the power of praying.
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  Specifically, I do believe that as we ask specific things, we get specific answers.
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  But sometimes you do have those moments where all you can do is just say, here's my heart, and I hope you can feel it.
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  And today has been a much better day because I know that he sees my heart and understands the loads or the burdens, you know, that we all carry, but that I carry specifically for me.
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  I felt that prayer being answered even though I couldn't be specific in the moment.
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  So my friends, God does not need your eloquence.
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  He just wants your presence.
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  Whether you're shouting at the ceiling, whispering a five second plea, or just handing Him a heavy heart with no words at all, he hears you and is drawing near to you.
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  Keep drawing near to him with all of your messy emotions.
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  And if you're ready to turn your daily internal monologue into a divine dialogue, we've got the tools to help you and you can get them for free on our Women warriors of Light website.
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  The first is this roadmap to Revelation.
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  It will help you walk through six simple steps that will help you hear God and communicate with him better in your daily life.
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  The second download is our Receiving Light and Revelation audio meditation by Wende that you can get and use anytime you want to clear the noise and connect better with God.
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  You can get those free at the link below.
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  So my friend, go have a car ride conversation with God today.
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  Be real, be raw, and then be still.
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  And until next time, may you arise.
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  Do it God's way.
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  God strong.