Deperate to Find God?Sample

Desperation To Pray

As an author, entrepreneur, artist, speaker, and mom of six boys, Ruth Chou Simons knows she needs God’s grace every day. For her, relying on God’s grace isn’t a mere cliché. It’s the theme of her life, a heart-changing truth that shows up in the way she runs her art shop, GraceLaced Co., writes her blogs and books, speaks on stage, and loves her family.

In her latest book, When Strivings Cease, Ruth opens up about her journey toward understanding grace and the gospel in a deeper way than ever before. And in today’s interview, you’ll be inspired and equipped as she tells about the spiritual practice that’s working best for her right now.

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I don't know if it's that the pandemic quickened me in this, but I feel an all-new desperation to pray. I have not been a very avid pray-er. You know how some people are great pray-ers—they're prayer warriors. They will stop right in the middle of any conversation and just grab your shoulder and pray over you. That's not my natural inclination—I'm naturally inclined to do, not to rest. I'm naturally inclined to keep running and then talk to God about it later. But in this season, I've embraced the mystery or the beautiful. I have to have music playing. I have my time with the Lord, but I’ve gotten a little bit more desperate about it. I talk to God all the time now. It's kind of surprising to me, too, but I find that I am praying out loud a lot and going on walks and actually talking to Him. I get in the car and, rather than trying to wait till I have peace and quiet or waiting for a specific time when I can pray a specific way, I'm finding it extremely necessary to speak to Him and then to recall, even verbally, the truth I need to remember.

If I were to point to some sort of a spiritual process in my life right now, it's that in my time with the Word, I'm needing to be both auditory and visual. I'm reading while I'm listening. I think there's a numbness that's happening when you're grieving, when our whole country is grieving, when the whole world is grieving. Everybody feels the ache of things not being quite right. And when we feel that way, it's really easy to just kind of go through the motions—and it's not like going through the motions isn't working for me. So I have to reengage and say, Okay, God is a real, real Father in my life. He is real, and I'm not going to just pray in my head, in my mind. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but for me, I have to engage Him as a person. I have to engage His word like it's an actual conversation. That's made all the difference for me.

—Ruth Chou Simons, entrepreneur, as told to Rapt Interviews