I’ve said this before and I will proudly say it again. I am christian.
And to those of you who can say the same, hello! To those of you who are unsure, but are still here, I hope you stay because this is one of the most important blog posts I believe I will ever make.
If you are looking for comfort, if you are looking for happiness, if you are looking for a real connection with God that’s as strong as Moses’s arms when he held up that staff, this is for you.
The Journey
So let’s cut to the chase.
A few days ago, I learned how to pray. That may sound crazy, especially if I told you I’ve been christian my entire life. God has been a big part of my life as well as my family’s ever since the moment I took my first breath. We pray before every meal, we pray as a family before bed, and we say our personal prayers.
But when I tell you I learned how to pray a few days ago, I don’t mean I learned how to just pray. I mean I learned how to pray right.
I didn’t just learn how to say ‘thank you’ or ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘please bless’.
I learned how to feel God’s presence. I learned how to talk to him and not just a perfect version of myself. And I learned how to listen to him answer back.
It was the most beautiful thing I think I’ve ever experienced.
There’s so many methods people use to pray. Prompts, steps, you name it. And while that is great, it’s so easy for it to become a script. To just run through the steps like it’s a chore. And it can become just another part of your routine.
Or at least that’s how it was for me. I have OCD and it’s really easy for things I do on a daily basis to become a compulsion routine.
So I would say the same prayer every night. Sometimes it would change. Sometimes I would pray for an extra person. But I would ask for the same things. I would say thank you for the same things.
And I’m going to be brutally honest here, I wasn’t talking to God. I was just talking. Or thinking, I should say. It was so distant it didn’t even matter if I fell asleep in the middle of it.
So I stopped doing it.
I didn’t say my personal prayers for months. But I felt so empty. I wanted to pray. I wanted a better connection with God. So I decided every night I would say the prayer that Jesus himself gave to us–the Lord’s prayer.
I said it every night. I said it when I was scared, when I was sad, when I needed to bring my attention to him. And it worked for a while. But it wasn’t long before it just became another part of my thinking routine.
So I took another step back. I asked myself, ‘Okay. How can I pray without routine? Without a script?’ And I remembered the times in my life where I literally had a constant prayer in my heart, where I would be constantly, casually talking to him. Those were the times I was the most connected to him.
So I told myself I would just talk to him every night. No script, no fancy words, nothing.
Most nights I forgot. And the nights I did remember, I didn’t really know what to say. All I could do was just ramble and go on a one sided tangent about my day.
It was then that I realized I didn’t know how to pray. I knew what I needed to do, where I needed to be, but I didn’t know how to get there.
Until one day at seminary we had a lesson about prayer. We talked about conscious prayer VS casual prayer. And when our teacher said ‘casual’ I thought that was a good thing. I thought she was talking about communicating with God like how you would communicate with a friend. But she actually meant casual to mean carelessness.
We talked about how we should be conscious when we talk to God. Not just saying or thinking the words and knowing he’s listening, but talking directly to him.
And I knew that….But I still barely remembered to pray that night. When I did it was just like the other nights. I started to talk to him, not really knowing what to say or talk about and in the middle I got sidetracked by other thoughts.
Sunday rolls along. My dad turns on a gospel podcast youtube video like he usually does and I realize it’s about worship and how to pray right.
So I listen. And what I learned from that video completely changed my life and my relationship with God for the better.
I will link that video at the end of this blog post, but for now I will tell you what I learned.
Worship
We’ve all heard of worship. We supposedly do it every Sunday when we sing and pass the sacrament. But what if I told you that worship is so much more than half heartedly singing a song or saying ‘you are a good, good father’?
There is a reason we need to start our prayers with worship and it’s not just acknowledgement to God.
Worship isn’t just saying what we already know. It’s not just complimenting him. Worship is a vital part of prayer that connects us to God.
When we say what exactly makes him a good father instead of just saying he is, when we say the things that he does for us that we are grateful for on a deep, personal level, we create an atmosphere around us. An atmosphere of his presence, his light.
It will awkward and stiff at first because it’s hard to know what to say. But once you start, as you keep going, I promise you that the words will flow. You’ll know exactly what you need to say and you’ll find that you’re not just telling God how great he is. You are affirming to yourself that he loves you no matter what, that he comforts you, that he is there with you.
And eventually this worship leads into prayer. Pure, honest, raw, prayer like you see in the scriptures.
Prayer
When this worship fades into prayer you will be in a place, a deep enough connection with God, that you’ll not only be able to talk to him, but also vividly hear him answer.
And once you are in this state, you won’t want to leave. You may pray for an hour, maybe more. But you won’t care.
That’s how you know you’re doing it right.
Repentance:
This is a touchy subject, but repentance in this form of prayer is very different from how we usually know it.
We know repentance as saying sorry to God. And while that is part of it, it doesn’t capture the whole picture. The importance of it, not just for others, but for ourselves.
Repentance is the process of bringing our mistakes, our “sins”, and dropping them at his feet. We confess our mistakes, not because he’s looking down on us and judging us for it, saying we need to apologize. That’s not it. We repent because our mistakes, our wrong doings are a weight on our shoulders that we can’t hold after long. Even the littlest of things can haunt us with guilt. And repenting is bringing them to God and letting go. Giving it to him. Saying, I did this, I want to do better, and I know you’re going to help me be better. And if I mess up again, you will forgive me. You’ll pick me back up and walk with me every step of the way as I try to improve.
That is repentance.
The Link
When you start with worship, it slowly creates a link between you and God. That link is vital to prayer because without it, prayer is a one sided conversation. Without it you can’t hear him answer. And more importantly, you can’t feel his presence.
But here’s the thing.
We can pray. We can worship. And we know that he’s listening.
But do we really?
Do we consciously reach out to him and know for a fact that we’re not just talking to the ceiling?
It’s so easy to stay where we’re at. It’s so easy to talk to ourselves when we pray. But these past few days I’ve noticed that I’ve had to sort of stretch my conscience to, what I call, “find him”.
I don’t exactly know how to explain it. But God gave me an analogy one night.
Think of it like a telepathy link. I don’t know if you’ve read many books or seen many movies with telepaths in it where it really explains the process of reaching into someone’s mind. But I’ve been reading a book series called Keeper of the Lost Cities by Shannon Messenger. It’s a modern fantasy series about a girl who’s a telepath and finds out she’s an elf.
We see in her point of view what it would be like to be a telepath and stretch your mind into someone else’s.
So God took that and showed me that talking to him is actually very similar.
God and us are telepaths. Yes, we can think something and he can enter our minds and know what we’re thinking. But that only goes one way.
In order for us to have a conversation and a connection or link, we have to find him. We have to reach our minds and find him.
Find his presence. Remind yourself that he is actually, really there and not just “listening”. Let yourself be surrounded in his light. And instead of thinking, ‘God is here and listening’, I want you to really push yourself to think of him as a person. There is a person that you can’t see with you, surrounding you. He’s above you, he’s beside you, he’s right there.
Talking to yourself and talking to God feel different. I want you to find that difference.
The Effect
This might not seem like the kind of thing to be like “what’s in it for me”. But I’m going to tell you anyway. Just so you can realize just how important this form of prayer really is in our daily lives.
When I prayed and I mean truly prayed for the first time that night, I cried. Not because I was sad. Not because I was angry. Not because I was scared.
I cried because I finally found God. And I could feel his love.
I put everything out on the table. All my fears, all my mistakes (big and small), everything. And I could feel them melting away. My inner critic was silenced for the first time since I can remember. Because I knew that whatever mistakes I made, however badly I messed up, he would always love and forgive me. And he won’t leave. He’ll always be right there, waiting for me to come back. And he will welcome me with open arms.
I saw myself as imperfect and accepted it for the first time because I knew that I’m a project God and I can work on together. Not a failure, not someone trying to prove something, but a project. Something that needs work, but something that has potential.
And that no one could come between that.
I went to bed that night holding God’s hand. And I fell asleep in minutes.
You know what I noticed? My mind was silenced. There was no room for my overthinking, my what ifs, my memories of every wrong thing I’ve ever done. Because God’s spirit was there. And he silenced it all.
The next day I felt his presence with every step I took. Anytime I made even a small mistake, I didn’t feel the gut wrenching guilt I usually did because I knew that I could bring it to him and he would take it away.
Now I’m not saying that when you pray your problems will be miraculously solved. I’m saying that you will have a guide, a shelter through the storm. And you will be and feel unstoppable with God on your side.
Your fears: Demolished
Your self doubt: Crushed
Your inner critic: Curb stomped
Your guilt: Disintegrated
We’ve lost this form of prayer in our lives. And it’s no wonder most of the population is depressed.
God prompted me to make this blog post and I really hope it helps anyone who reads it.
May his light be with you.
Hugs,
