prayer: n. A practice of communicating with one’s God, the specific words or methods used for praying.
Prayer is one of those things you either practice or you don’t. You either believe in it or you view it as something only the weak and feeble-minded engage in—although more than one such person has thrown a “hail-Mary” prayer to a God they don’t even believe in when times get really rough. It could be said that desperate times call for desperate measures.
For a person of faith, petitioning God is an important part of daily life. We all have needs and concerns, worries and problems, and God has said we may bring those to Him and leave them at His feet. Some requests are personal; others are in behalf of family and friends. Many people make a point of praying for people they don’t know and have never met. The current state of chaos in our nation is more than enough reason to become a pray-er.
How does one pray? Prayer is a simple act of communicating with God one-on-one. However, as with many facets of a spiritual life, how-to’s abound, presented by those who view life with God as a series of methods and techniques.
An online search revealed “The Proper Way to Pray,” along with your choice of four, five—or even nine—steps to follow. What do you say when you pray? Instructions are available for that as well.
I had a dream last night…or it might have been the night before. In my dream, I was having a conversation about prayer and praying with a young woman. She was not one to speak openly about her spiritual life, but she had either prayed for someone or about something. Soft-spoken and quite reticent, she very quietly said, “I just asked with my heart.”
Profound, simple, and true—that is how you pray. Prayer is never about the words. It is about standing before God as the innermost part of one’s being silently cries out to Him.
How do you pray? Just ask with your heart.
I