Good morning/afternoon/evening everyone. Today I have been pondering a lot on the idea of “prayer” and what it means to me and what I think it does.
I usually always pray in the morning when I wake up and at night before I go to sleep, and of course before every meal. When I pray they are not typically scripted and just fill in the blanks kind of just asking God “Dear God, I pray for ______ and that it goes well, I pray ______ goes smoothly, I pray I have a good night sleep and get an A on my test, Amen.” I always try my best to not just pray but to have a conversation with God, and I think one of the most important keys to having a conversation with him is really believe that someone is on the other end listening to you. Nobody picks up their phone without dialing a number and tries to talk to someone even though nobody is there, so why would somebody pray not believing someone is there?
I believe there are 3 stages to faith in prayer. To relate to the phone analogy again, for the first stage it would be the idea you are picking up a phone and not even dialing and just rambling on. The second stage is kind of like leaving a voice message and then you saying what you need to say not really knowing if the person will get that message or care enough to listen to it. Of course, the last stage is dialing a number and having that person pick up and having a conversation with you. That way you truly believe there is someone listening and it makes it much easier to talk to rather than “filling in the blanks” like you would in a voice mail. I have found prayer to be much more satisfying once you believe God is listening to you in the moment and a lot more fun.
1st John 5:15 reads, “And if we know that he hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have what we asked of him.” Which is exactly what I used 3 paragraphs to say, said in one sentence.
A while ago I heard a sermon at church and it was about prayer and the pastor spoke about “Red and blue light prayers.” He explained that term as being the prayers someone prays when they see a cops read and blue lights flashing behind them when they are pulled over. And they would say a quick prayer “Dear God, please don’t give me a ticket amen” and he talked about how little prayers like that with no deep meaning and believing from the person praying, might go into God’s “junk” folder.
To tie all that back to this world race, I have been focusing on my prayers lately and working on truly believing because I am certain God is testing my faith and seeing if I plan to stick it to the end even if things are not looking too hot. And I just thought I would share with you guys my thoughts on prayer! Well, I hope you all have a wonderful day and I really appreciate you guys taking the time to read all of this. Take care <3
