So I was going to write a long thing on what I thought prayer was, what it's for, what we get out of it, what God gets out of it and so on and so forth but like I don't actually really know? And that's not really something I can work out or teach myself in an afternoon. So I'm going back to that thing we teach kids. That prayer "is talking to God" which to be honest seems to be both the simplest and most all encapsulating definition.
Now I have all the same problems with setting aside prayer time that I wrote about in the post about setting aside bible reading time but a thing I learnt in my journey in to paganism is that I do contemplative devotion better when i'm using my body in some way, when I have something to focus on, when I bring my whole self and not just my brain to the prayer.
And I probably will do some nerdy research on the point of prayer but for now I'm going to spend the next couple of months exploring practical creative ways of praying. Probably I will write about that once a week or once a fortnight, about how its going, whether its working or not, and what I'm learning from it about both myself and God
We used to sing this song "prayer is like a telephone, for us to talk to Jesus."
ReplyDeleteI think in my case, Jesus had a bad line... ALSO I am very intrigued by what on earth God CAN get out of prayer?
Oh dear! I remember that song too, it was terrible!
DeleteI felt like Jesus had a bad line for a long time but I think that was cased by a bunch of stuff I hadn't dealt with.
I think God must get something out of prayer or he wouldn't want his followers to do it?
To me that much is simple. God loves us. God wants to have a ongoing, loving relationship with us. What is the biggest and most important part of any relationship? Communication.
ReplyDeleteGod talks to us through his word, guides us even through our feelings at times, but nothing quite beats simply talking to him. Prayer allows us to give it off our chest to God, to lay all before him and let him make our yoke lighter.
As followers of Christ, we should look to replicate what Christ did. (As much as possible anyway.), Jesus prayed, a lot. In the face of adversary, he would pray. He would often go alone and leave his circle of followers to pray to God, talk to God. He taught us how to pray and said that we should do it; and that for me, even if nothing else is enough to accept that we should also do it.
"Whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, because they love to pray while standing in synagogues and on street corners so that people can see them. Truly I say to you, they have their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you” (Matthew 6:5-6).
Blessings to you :)