Prayer... Can I pray the wrong way?

How do you think God see’s you?  How do you think he recognizes your heart, or your prayers?  Wouldn’t you like to know what it’s like in Heaven or in the mind of God?  To hear prayers of the people you created and love.  I would think it would be overwhelming emotionally to hear someone praying their deepest darkest secrets.

Prayer is something that we all need to enter into daily.  Actually, prayer is something that we should never stop doing.  We should learn to pray to God all day long.  I know that praying isn’t always easy for me and I usually struggle to find the right words or, not to be asking God for a million things before I give him his praise. 

We make prayer harder than it should be.  We think we are putting on some Broadway show and need to have a lot of pomp and circumstance to make our prayers get heard or even just for them to make it to Heaven and arrive to Jesus.   You know that none of that is true.  The only way to pray is the way you have been gifted to pray.

Each one of us have our own unique gifts and some people have been called or gifted to spend a lot of time in prayer and some of us just are not.  Thank God for the people who have the ability to pray for hours and for the long haul?

 I am always amazed by how prayer seems to be such a difficult thing but really it’s just us communicating with God.  I realized not that long ago that prayer is just talking to God like I would talk to my Best Friend.  I just open up my heart and speak.  Sometimes I pray in the quiet of my own heart and mind and sometimes I get on my knees and boldly come before the thrown of God.

There are times when it’s not possible for me to speak a prayer out loud, so I quietly speak to God internally.  I believe that God hears them either way, because he knows my heart.  He knows my need.  He knows everything before I do, so the quiet prayer, I believe has as much power as a prayer spoken out loud.  I think if we would ask God would you rather us pray quietly or not at all he would always say, pray quietly. 

God yearns to commune with us.  He longs for us to say Hello to him or a quick thank you God for waking me up this morning.   I didn’t understand this idea for a long time, and recently I have been having changes in my own heart, about prayer.  I used to be the one who would opt to not pray unless I could speak my prayer out loud and then I thought to myself, who am I hurting here?  I am hurting me!  God needs me to ask him for help.  God wants me to ask him for help, so if the only way I can do that is in the silence of my own mind and heart than I am going to do that. 

 I could be stopping a blessing for myself or someone else, if I chose to be quiet and pray at another time.   I also used to be worried that my prayer wasn’t pretty enough, or that I wasn’t speaking in the proper language, so I would find myself speaking in a manner that was not natural to me, and I’d wonder.. Hmm I wonder if God understood that this is what I meant to say. 

 I remember one Thanksgiving my mom was giving the prayer before our meal and my sister and I busted into laughter because my mom’s prayer was nothing like her.  She was trying to impress God and us with her prayer.  She wanted to sound eloquent and put together to make sure that her prayer was heard.  Now, I am sure her prayer was heard and a moment of laughter is always a good thing, but is that how God really needs us to pray?  

My Grandmother had the simplest prayers and I love that about her.  She wasn’t worried that God needed her to be something she wasn’t.  She was a simple, kind, God loving woman, so that’s how she was going to be when she presented herself to God. 

She had one prayer that to this day makes me love her more than I thought possible, and even though she doesn’t know, it has helped me change my prayer life.  She would simply thank God for hot water.  She loved baths and every time she took a bath she would say Thank you God for this hot water.  How simple but yet how powerful.  She was thanking her Lord for supplying her with all she needed in that moment.  She was coming to her God and saying thank you for blessing me with the ability to take a Hot bath and enjoy it.  How lovely is that?

I am very biased in this opinion, but I really think that my Grandmother had it right.  She would thank God all through out her day.  Thank you for the Sun.  Thank you for my family.  Thank you for the birds.  Thank you for my garden.  Thank you for Jesus.   A prayer always seemed to be in her heart and we know that for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.  She spoke from the abundance of her heart to God.  It wasn’t in pretty phrasing or long winded words; it was the pure part of her, her Love and Thankfulness to God.  

We can speak to God whenever we want and it just needs to be truth to your heart.  We can say Help Me over and over and that is our simple prayer. 

Prayer is such an important part of our daily lives and one that I think we don’t pay enough attention too.  God has told us to pray to him through his son, Jesus.  So when we are praying we need to bring our prayers to Jesus and he will intercede for us with God.  I personally trust Jesus a 100% with my prayers.  

Try bringing your prayers to Jesus as you would bring your prayers to a friend, because you are.  Jesus is the Best Friend you will ever have.  He is the one who will be on your side even when you aren’t on your side.

 Jesus is here every second of every day and he never needs to take a break.  He is always, always there for you.  In those moments when life has just overwhelmed you, talk to Jesus.  Ask Jesus to help deliver you from this moment and to give you peace to get through it.   It’s OK to feel overwhelmed at times with life but know that your problems are never too big for God.

 I struggle with this at times.  I struggle with releasing my prayers to God and thinking is he going to be able to take care of this?  Maybe he has too much going on and this just isn’t worth praying for, or am I being selfish in asking for this.  What I have been learning, because I am still learning too, is that if I don’t ask God to help me, he can’t help me.  If I don’t ask for what I want, need or desire, how is God going to give it to me?

 God doesn’t push himself on you.  He doesn’t make you do something; he waits and lets us come to him.  I think that’s why we come to God and a relationship with God, when we are at a time of need.  If we would have been praying, leading up to that time, we probably wouldn’t be begging God on our knees, with our tear streaked faces for a miracle.

 Do you know you have a miracle every day?  Your miracle is you can talk to God and he will listen, and he even talks back to you.

 God will decide if it’s something that is right for you.  Maybe that job you are praying for isn’t good for you... Right now.  Maybe God, since he is the all-knowing God, maybe he knows that there could be a problem with the job or that it might take too much time away from your family, and cause problems with your marriage.  Maybe God knows that the man you have been praying for isn’t ready for you.  He’s coming but just not at this time, because if he did come right now, it would be a disaster.

 A Blessing given to soon is not a Blessing it is in fact a Curse.  

I don’t know about any of you, but I am the kind of person, who wants what they want, when they want it, and I am sorry to say, from years of experience, it doesn’t work that way with God.  God will give you what you need when you need it, which means on his time table. 

There is nothing neither you, nor I can do about it.  We can try to speed it up and make it come faster, but God’s timing is always the best.  We can rest and know that if God has something for you; it is going to get to you.   Don’t be worried if you don’t get the promotion or if the boy doesn’t call, that means it’s either not God’s time, or he has something better in mind for you. 

God doesn’t keep things from us or allow things to happen to us to punish us.  God is a good God, he is a just God, and he is a God of restoration.   Don’t be angry with God when what you are praying for doesn’t happen, or doesn’t happen on your time table.  Don’t be disappointed or give up, because it’s not happening the way you think it should happen. 

It’s hard to sit back and see nothing happening when you pray, pray and pray but don’t get upset with God.  Don’t turn your back on God because you are unhappy with your current circumstances.  God loves you with his whole heart and he desires nothing more than for you to love him back and for you to have joy.  

God isn’t hurting you on purpose he is using whatever is happening with you to make changes in or around you.  Maybe you are as impatient as I am, and God needs to stretch your patience to break your desire to control everything.  There are so many things and reasons for our prayers to not be answered right away but the one thing we cannot do, is turn our backs from the one who is able to give you exceeding, abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us.