What exactly is a prayer?
I grew up with a standard set of prayers for various occasions. It could be a blessing of food. Or it is confession from our hearts. Some may use a Rosary as a guide. I often used prayer begging for something that I wanted such as a snow day, a specific birthday present, or even a date with someone that I admired. No, there are no "approved" standard prayers for a date, but I created some of my own standard prayers; you get the picture. But standard prayers did help me with the idea and discipline to pray on a regular basis. When I was younger, and even in some moments as I age, my prayers have focused on me.
Now this is not a bad thing. Our Holy Father wants us to turn to Him in time of needs. He wants a relationship with each of us. He wants us to rely on Him. Just as children rely on the adults in their lives, so too, do we rely on God. Have you ever noticed what a child wants? When they are younger, they are focused on themselves. So, when we start a prayer life when we are younger, again, it is often focused on ourselves. God is very understanding of our desires. He fully knows what is in our hearts. We cannot fool Him; we only fool ourselves.
So, what does He want? Honesty. Talk to God from our hearts. Tell Him what you think. Our God is an awesome God . . . He is definitely big enough for everything that we have.
So, going back to the question, what is prayer?
A prayer is not just a voice of desires, but also a moment to praise and worship God. A prayer can be formal, memorized words such as The Lord's Prayer. It can be in the form of a poetic song. It can be conversational as we would talk to our Best Friend. Or perhaps it is a chant. I often pray in e-mail to family and friends. Sometimes it is just or sobs or laughter. Then again, it could be uttered in tongues. Sometimes people experience a loss of words, so the silence becomes our prayer. How about our family time together? Be it a picnic, a walk in the park, throwing a frisbee, or sitting on a porch swing staring at the stars . . . it can be a prayer.
Sometimes a person just needs to fall to one's knees in prayer. This is just something that we should be doing. Other times we can sit and read in a prayerful heart. In our family, though it is not as often as I would like, we stand or sit in a circle either holding hands together or apart. Someone, usually me, starts the prayer. Then upon completion, that person will squeeze the hand of the person next in the circle. That person prays. If you do not feel like praying out loud, there is no pressure. Give a few seconds or so of silence and squeeze the next hand. I will not put someone on the spot. Someone said that we are skipping over that person. I like to consider it a chance for the person to participate without words. The thoughts are still there.
Our prayer circle takes on the unique personalities of those who are praying. My "group" praying style is more structured which is reflective of my Catholic upbringing. My "quiet" praying is more like a conversation. I even ask God questions; and lots of them. In our circle, we will have the formalized praying and some conversational and some poetic and even the occasional tongues. Most of our prayer circles are a free-for-all and some will have a specific topic or theme. The latter was especially true when we started praying for Zena's and Alla's Visas to come to the United States. Here is my prayer via e-mail for this very subject:
"Dearest and precious Lord and Savior,
We bring this prayer to You today. Almighty God, You know the desires of our hearts. We want to praise You and worship You. We want to glorify You. We want to perform works in Your Holy name, not to earn our way to heaven as others try to do, but we perform works in Your name because we have accepted You as our Lord and Savior and we want to glorify You and exalt You on high. Lord God, our Holy Father, we want to implement this vision that You gave to us. We want to bring Your Word, Your Son, Jesus to others. We want to use Your Holy Spirit to heal the hurting. We to build a ministry in Your name. But most of all, we want to do Your will. All of this is nothing if we are the ones making it happen.
We pray for You to make this ministry to happen as a testimony to Your Almighty power. We want to be vessels for You to fill to overflowing that we pour out Your blessings upon a small portion of this vast planet. We give You MoRP to mold and shape to edify Your love, understanding, and healing. We give You this family in Idaho to mold into Your image of a Christian family.
We give You Zena and Alla that you continue to bless these loyal servants of Yours. Bless their passports, their paperwork, their health, and their hearts. Oh Lord, You know that we desire to bring them to America as part of the MoRP team. You know that we want to write programs, seminars, music, and everything else that needs to be done for this to happen. You know that we want them to grow with us as we want to bring this to others. You know how much Alla and Zena mean to us as fellow Christians, as friends, and as family.
Jesus, forgive us for the sins that we have that act as barriers between us and You. Give us the strength to accept Your decision regardless of the outcome. We entrust our vision and our future to You. We lift our praises to You. We lift our love to You. We lift our hearts to You. We thank You for the salvation that bought for us on the cross through Your grace and love by taking our sins away from all of us and making a spot in eternity for us to be with You. Thank You for pouring out Your blood as the new and living sacrifice. Thank You for the gifts of the Holy Spirit that You gave to each of us. We pray this in honor and glory to You, Father, Savior, and Comforter.
In all this we ask that Your will be done."
Why did I put this prayer here? This is my prayer for God to take care of the Visas for Alla and Zena. You can see that it is a structured prayer which is my tendency for "public" prayer. But there is one thing that I want to include in every prayer: God's will be done. It is perfectly acceptable to pray for specifics but I also want God to be in control. He knows better that I what is needed at a specific time. Zena, Alla, Debbie and I have all turned over our hearts to His will. Though we may be disappointed and even upset, we still want to be in His will. As I mentioned earlier, a child may ask for something, but do the parents always give the child what is asked? No, because the child does not understand the entire situation. And we are as children in God's eyes. Do we understand all of what God planned? Nope, not even close. If left to me, I would have thuroughly messed up the entire plan. That is why it must be His will.
With this, I suggest that you talk to God on a level that you are comfortable. Whether it is structured or freestyle, memorized or adlibbed, pros or poetry . . . just talk to Him. That is what He wants. Include Him in your life and your decisions.
"Daddy Steve"
17 June 2007, "Father's Day"
