Thoughts on Prayer

Our Pastor has been preaching a series on prayer. It is something I must admit I struggle with from time to time. I feel like I don’t know what to pray or how to pray. I worry that my words are all wrong, at times I might not even have words. However, I do know just how important prayer is...many times it is the only thing that helps, that soothes, that satisfies. I did a little research and found several “sound bites” about prayer that have been helpful. 

One of the most helpful and I can’t find the author so I apologize for not citing it properly, but one person wrote they begin their prayers with;

“Father, I love you too.” 

That just helps to center me – acknowledging to the Creator of the universe, to the Great I Am, to the Almighty that we love Him, because he first loved us. 

John Bunyan was an English writer and Baptist preacher best remembered as the author of the Pilgrim's Progress once said; 

“In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words with out a heart.” 

That is so helpful for me; for those times when I struggle for words, to know that crying out from the heart no matter the words, no matter the issue is ok. It is our way of being in a relationship with our good, good Father in Heaven. 

There is a small book that I once read called The Practice of the Presence of God which is a collection of conversations with Brother Lawrence; a monk that entered into a life of service and devotion to God and spent the majority of his life working in the kitchen. Brother Lawrence once said of prayer; 

“There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful than that of a continual conversation with God.” 

That is my hope (and prayer) for us all; that we might enter into a sweet and delightful life of continual conversation with God. 

Grace and Peace!