Prayer

What is prayer? The first prayer I learned was as a child and it was "Now I Lay me down to sleep"...
For a long time as I was growing up, I felt that prayer was only those words that someone taught you. But as I got older, I realized that prayer is much more than that and that I did it often.

Prayer is simply talking to God. You can get help from words someone else has written but I feel it's best when you use your own words. I realized as a child, that I talked to God all of the time--almost as if he were sitting right next to me. All you need to do is speak to Him from your heart.

I believe that God speaks to all of us and answers us in ways He knows we will understand. That will be different for me than it is for you. I believe that until you accept this, you may be missing out on a lot of His answers! You have to listen very carefully and recognize when he is talking to you and giving you an answer.

One area where my mom and I disagree is about this. Especially as I was growing up, she always felt that I would say that God answered me as a way to justify something that I wanted to do. What she didn't realize was that wasn't always the case, rather that  when I felt I had my answer, I could move forward with confidence and be at peace because I knew what I was supposed to do. I didn't question it or complain and that is why she felt that everything I did was what I wanted to do. (hope that made sense!)

God will always hear your prayers and he will always answer; you won't always get the answer that you want but it will be the answer that you need and that is for your own good. He will not always answer when you want him to but he will always answer in time. Just listen. He will make the answers evident if you just listen and learn to recognize his voice.