I Just Can't Be "Positive"... but I Will Be Prayerful

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

If you are naturally a positive person, you probably don’t need to read this post, but if you are like me and you currently struggle with the temptation of poking out the eyeballs of all the people who keep telling you “Let’s just be positive,” I want you to hear me out… 

I am not by nature a positive person. I am a realist, a perfectionist even, so “being positive” in the midst of real problems seems deceitful to me. It feels like in order to do that I would need to pretend the problems are not really problems at all. I also consider myself a very honest person, so to fake a positive outlook that I don’t really have is out of the question. Does that give me an excuse to be negative and complain? Absolutely not. Phil. 2:14  says to “do all things without complaining and disputing…” 

We (myself and others like me) struggle to “be positive,” and we are all commanded to not be negative or complain. So, when our lives remind us that people are not perfect and problems are actually real problems, what do we do?  Instead of striving to force a positive mindset that isn’t genuine, the solution is for us to strive to be prayerful. Life will never be perfect. There may be many times when we just can’t be 'positive,' but we can ALWAYS be PRAYERFUL (1 Thess. 5:17).

And… I would raise the bar a bit more. I challenge us to as often as possible be prayerful OUT LOUD. How would our situations change if the next time someone told us to “be positive” we answered, “I don’t think I can, but I will be prayerful. Would you pray with me?”  Ya’ll, I know what this is asking. My career banned prayer long ago… that’s a major cause of the problems we are now seeing. I can’t fix any of those problems, but Jesus can. In scripture, when a desperate father brought the disciples his son, they couldn’t heal him from the evil that held him captive. Jesus said, “bring him to Me” (Matt 17:14-18).

I am convinced that being insincerely positive will not solve any of our problems, and neither will complaining. The only real power to fix the brokenness is to be prayerful, because that is how we bring them to Jesus. Let’s, as the body of Christ, be prayerful together, and let’s wait in anticipation for Jesus to answer.