A Maturing Prayer

This post started out heading in a completely different direction than it is now headed. God is amazing! These past two months have been insanely busy and that has created a lot of problems emotionally, physically and honestly spiritually. This post originally started out basically whining about things that have transpired and how it has impacted my spiritual life in particular and as I was getting to the point of what I thought God had for me tonight in His Word, He showed me something completely different...so here's that thought instead.
     Circumstances lately have had a very negative effect on my walk with God. My prayer life has been horrible and that includes my prayer for meeting Tebow. It has gotten so bad, that at times, while I would be greatly disappointed in myself if it happened, I would not be surprised if God did not answer this request. I forget to pray, so much so that over the past month I have been asking God if it is even worth it to keep on praying, it is nearly April after all. Yet, every time I think I'm done, it's pointless, I haven't been faithful so why should He be, the Holy Spirit convicts me; He won't let me let it go. And honestly, that frustrates me.
     There are several areas of my life that are being neglected and they are needful things and the pressure to take care of them weighs on me heavily. often to the point of me shutting down in an effort to cope...which of course doesn't help. Every time God convicts me about not praying, I feel overwhelmed because, in that moment of conviction, I do pray and I do ask God to be more faithful than me. But in that moment of conviction I also feel overwhelming frustration because I know those moments of prayer are nothing compared to what I used to spend praying and I feel guilty. I read a verse in II Thessalonians tonight in which Paul was praying for the people in the church to have power to do all the things their faith had prompted them to do. That verse struck me because here lately, given the circumstances, I question whether or not this was something I should have been praying about at all. In reading that verse, I recalled very clearly the moment God said ask Me and see what I will do. I know this prayer journey is something my faith in God prompted me to do...so that question is settled, but there was still this frustration over my actual prayers for it. As I was writing the original post, God brought something to mind. This prayer is over two years old now, maybe it doesn't need the same kind of prayer that it did in the beginning. Maybe I don't need to spend hours praying to know God's mind and direction for this prayer because I already know it, He's already shown me that. I don't need to spend hours trying to find His will for this, He's shown me and what I don't know, I 've already asked for. This prayer has matured and grown and maybe is to the point now that all I need to be asking is for God to bring the answer as He sees fit; that prayer wouldn't take as long as the early months of this prayer did.
     I know I need to pray more often than just the times God convicts me, but at least I have a greater peace in realizing that this prayer doesn't have to be as long as it once was, many of the things I was looking for answers to have been answered. It's okay that my prayer time over this is shorter if that's how God leads. I don't need to feel frustrated or defeated and I certainly don't need to give up. Time is of no consequence to God, He can accomplish quite a lot in very little time...my job is to just pray as God directs, whether it be a few minutes or many.