My 2025 planner’s year-in-review reminded me that I had a full year despite how mundane most days felt. And as I read or watched end-of-year summaries on social media, I kept thinking about what made 2025 truly different for me. I thought about how it wasn’t really about what I accomplished that year, but what I learned.
One night, as my husband was driving us home through the dimly lit roads, the answer came to me in the darkness: the sin of certainty. My life mirrored what it feels like traveling in the dark, learning to trust that we’ll get where we need to be, even when the light can only show us parts of the road.
As I mentioned in my previous post, about how I was getting worried with how things were spiralling out of my control, I bought into the idea that I can shape my future by how much I believe in what I pray for. The Word of Faith teaching promised that if I ask in faith, I will receive. I thought that if I just prayed harder and believed without a doubt, God would have to listen.
The year humbled me. Months of prayer, trying so hard to maintain an unwavering belief, all the “right” words, yet things did not turn out as I asked. Was it a lack of faith? I had been so eager to find a simple explanation: do this, get that. It must have been a lack of faith on my part.
But can it be that a no is just a no? Is it possible that a no is simply God’s answer, and it doesn’t necessarily translate to insufficient faith? What happened to “ask and you will receive?”
I was forced to revisit what prayer actually is. Prayer in the Hebrew Bible was surprisingly diverse and honest. Why does the church make it feel like the believers are always joyful, often frowning upon and dismissing those who feel sadness and fear? Even the Psalms don’t show a single emotion. Instead, they swing between praise and lament, sometimes within the same prayer (Psalm 13, Psalm 22, Psalm 88). Job also questioned God relentlessly through his suffering. I was even surprised by how God commended Job’s raw honesty over his friends’ tidy theological explanations about his suffering (Job 42). I have been reading and rereading Job in 2025, trying to understand our tendency to offer tidy theological explanations for complex and often unexplainable matters.
I can’t help how Job’s friends sound like voices in Christianity, the ones I often hear that sometimes terminate or invalidate how I feel about my experience, and force me to just “not feel things” so as to show no room for doubt. “Just have faith.” “Pray more.” “Speak life, not death.” Each phrase implies the same toxic equation that if prayer doesn’t work, then you must be the problem. You did not believe hard enough. You did not have it because you did not ask enough.
Then I returned to the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6:9-13, and was reminded that even as we lay out our desires, Jesus taught us to pray: “Your will be done.” Not “My will be done if I say it with enough conviction and faith.”
Jesus modeled this in Gethsemane (Matthew 26:36-44):
Going a little farther, he fell facedown and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”
Matthew 26:39 CSB
Jesus asked three times for His desire. He was honest about what He wanted. But ultimately, Jesus submitted to the Father’s will. It is the opposite of the “name it, claim it.” It is “ask, but trust.”
As I was writing this, the Garden of Eden story came to mind. God invited Adam and Eve to trust His definition of good and evil rather than insisting on their own. Meanwhile, the Word of Faith prayer reverses this, as it insists that we know what’s good (our desired outcome) and demands God to comply. Having the “ask and you will receive” mindset felt just like the fallout of Adam and Eve, where we insist on trusting our judgment over God’s wisdom.
Jesus taught a different way: “Here’s what I want, but ultimately, I trust You more than I trust my own understanding of what’s best.”
2025 taught me that faith in God is more about trusting God’s character and goodness, not certainty about my desired outcomes. It’s relational, emotional, honest, and reflects my humanity rather than trusting in the power of words.
I realized how my prayer had become a formula, saying the right words, maintaining perfect certainty, speaking things into existence. I was slapped with the hard truth that it’s not prayer. It is actually closer to incantation. I was treating words themselves as powerful, independent of God’s will.
2025 stripped that mindset away and I am grateful.
jessa 
Start the conversation