Alright, so I'll be one of the first to admit that I don't pray very often. But one thing I do more than pray, is wonder why I don't pray as much. I mean really, what is stopping me? It's not like I have to pay to pray, or it's not like I have to go to some special place. I can pray during every moment of my life no matter where I'm at if I wanted to. But yet I choose not to. Instead I choose to pray when I need something. I pray when something good happens.
Not to say either of those two reasons are bad reasons to pray! It's just that, when those are your only two reasons then something has to change and I, myself, am slowly starting to realize it. I'm realizing that I'm getting nowhere spiritually.
I asked one of the closest friends I have the question of "Why do I have to sit down and pray? Why can't I just think it? If God knows all, and knows the depths of my mind why can't I just think my prayer and He be satisfied?" I thought I had him fooled! But I was wrong. He responded with a situation that totally throws my thoughts about what I asked him in reverse. He put it to me as, say you came home every day and your mom was in the kitchen but you never said hey to her. You just thought, "Hey" and expected her to know it was given. What if you never spoke to your mom, or your closest friends, at all. You just thought about them and expected them to know that you care enough about them to think about them but not talk to them. Woah!
So I was shocked. I never thought of it that way. That, even though God knows all, he still wants to talk to us and still wants us to talk to him! But yet I've hit another roadblock. Right now I'm going through a tough time, to be honest. And I find myself praying more. But when I do pray I call myself a hypocrite (post on this coming soon!). I call myself a hypocrite because I don't know if I would be praying then, or would be praying as much if I was happy. If I wasn't wondering why people did some things. If whenever I'm alone I find myself down.
So would I pray as much? Probably not. I feel like I've let myself, and other people, down so much. Because I came out of The Gauntlet saying that my prayer life had been changed. And truthfully it had because before that I never prayed. And when I say never I'm not exaggerating. Of course I'm praying more now, but it's only because I need something. I pray that I have strength daily. Because I need strength right now. O but of course everybody always needs strength! So you're saying it's ok for me to always pray for that, but what if it's all I pray for? I need to work on it.
Prayer is important. It's important to God. God wants us to pray, He doesn't want us to just think about Him. He wants us to talk to others about Him. He wants us to talk directly to Him. Because He is God and He deserves more than we can ever give Him.
