Learning to Pray

Prayer can be such a tough concept to really handle. I am not saying we don’t understand what prayer is, though I do at times still struggle with it. But the whole idea of talking to a God who we can’t see sometimes just seems a little overwhelming to our human brains at least if we were to be truly honest.

When I turned my life back over to serving God a little over a year ago I can honestly say that sometimes I wondered if he was even listening. I can even admit that there are times even now that I sometimes feel like he just isn’t really caring to hear my prayer at that moment. Though I know this isn’t true and God is always excited to hear our prayers.  However, this last sentence is always easy to say but admittedly for my feminine brain it’s not always easy for me to really believe.

A couple of months after I gave my life back to the service of living for Christ I had such a hard time coming to grips with the fact that God heard me or even wanted to really use my life. I felt like my prayers were only getting ceiling high and that was pretty much where they got stuck.  However, I am the first to admit I was not a strong person of prayer.

I believed prayer worked, but maybe just not for me. I had honestly turned my back on God several times in my life already so I often struggled with the idea that he even wanted to listen to me, after all he’s heard from me before how much I love him and then proceeded to walk away from him and ignore him for years at a time.  Why would this time be any different? I felt this constant question in my mind each time I prayed, so finally in desperation for God to really hear me I yelled at him to test my faith.  Ummm seriously that was DUMB!!!  Cuz boy did He ever take me up on that idea! And not only did he decide to test my faith but he took my family on a little joy ride with me.

So for about 8 months straight we have been in probably the low of the low.  Somehow my marriage became ever stronger than I could imagine, my faith became stronger than it’s been, and my prayer life well let’s just say there wasn’t an hour in my days that went by unless I was sleeping that I wouldn’t at some point stop to pray.

Now, this is the part where the idea of prayer really started to sink in. God was doing this awesome thing with teaching me more than one lesson at a time.  He’s cool like that, trying to kill two birds with one stone.  My faith was tested a lot to the core. And my prayer life also began. I of course started just by coming to God begging him to help us out, to help us make ends meet, to help us find a way to make sure Alex got to eat at night and we could find a way to still pay our bills.  It was amazing watching God come through time and time again right on time and just when we needed. This was when I started to realize I needed to trust him because he always answered my prayers just in the nick of time.

My prayers did start off each time being really selfish.  They were never huge elaborate prayers.  They never last probably more than 2 minutes but they were directly from my heart asking God for guidance through my day or help with the finances. 

A few months went by that God was always answering prayers and turning another fiasco into a miracle for us before he finally reminded me to use some manners. So each time I got an answer to a prayer I realized I needed to add to my prayer life. All he needed and wanted was a simple.  “thank you GOD!”  Usually I would add in an “your awesome!”  Just because that is how I felt. Each time my heart really was thankful and each time it was like new all over again he truly was AWESOME!

How funny though that over that period of time I really did learn how to pray. I still don’t pray long elaborate prayers, partially because my brain is ADD and I can’t stay on one topic of conversation for more than 5 minutes without completely getting distracted and usually thinking of something else entirely different.  Towards the end of my wonderful life lessons of faith and prayer and constantly seeing the amazingness God I started knowing that he will continue to be evident in my life as long as I stay faithful to him always.

But the big part of my learning experience I had was after the struggle we went through subsided a bit. I realized for a while that I started backing of on my prayer life. I was missing out on my every day little chats with God and I was starting to desperately miss him.  It wasn’t even the miracles I was missing it was just feeling the few moments of peace and love I would get whenever I would go to him with a quick prayer.

 I realized that my prayer life could be more than just requests for things I need or thank you’s for answered prayers.  God created prayer to be an open communication with him always.  He wants to hear my every heartfelt comment for him, such as “I love you.’ Or “good morning God, the sunshine is so nice, Thanks for making it a sunny day,” or even, “God, that was wrong of me please forgive me.’  One of my most common prayers during my day is, “God, please help I am angry help me control my temper and anger.”  God seriously wants to hear it all, and he wants to be a part of my life just like my husband is or my friends are.

When I hear the verse I Thessalonians 5: 17 “pray without ceasing” I think this is what Paul really meant when he was instructing them to pray.  We need to keep our daily lives open to God, inviting him into every detail.