A Note on Prayer

I know I don't post much, but sometimes I just feel like I have something to say that might be worth putting out there. This is one of those times. I've been doing a lot of meditation on spirituality and the true nature of God. I'm not saying that I'm in to all the new age belief systems that attempt to de-deify God in order to make Him more approachable. I think that to do that is to miss out the key point. To de-deify God and find your inner god is just a new form idolatry where the idol is your self. We are not gods, but we come from God. He made us and as He puts it, all things are held together by Him. With that said, in order to find ourselves, we have to admit that we are of Him and must rely on His wisdom in order to even know what questions to ask of Him. This leads to my title topic. Organized religion seems to teach us to pray by protocol. "Dear God, {insert platitudes}, I humbly approach you with {wish list}, not to say that I'm not grateful for {more platitudes}..." repeat until you feel like He must have heard you. The problem with this methodology is that it requires us to assume we even know what we need! I can't remember the last time I felt like I knew what path was the right path or that I knew what I needed to ensure that I was doing the right thing that would end up best. The repetition also makes people believe that it's the words that make the prayer. That is not the case. Words, are a form of communication for use with other people, they can be in any language, any combination of sounds and still have the same core meaning. God said that He knows what we are going to say before we say it, so why even bother speaking our prayers, let alone repeat them over and over again. It is our emotions and faith that empower our prayers, and we speak them because our words are there to make it real to us. While praying in our minds is powerful, to say it out loud is to commit to it and give your emotions form. This is why I pray aloud despite the fact that words are for people, not God. I have been led to the fact that the most powerful form of prayer is God guided prayer. One must fully release any belief that they know what to pray for. Ask God to lead you in your prayer and He will often times guide you to the root of problems in your life and lead you to understand things that eluded you grasp. Many wonder how you know when God is talking to you. For me, it's when I suddenly have an answer that is way beyond what I could have come up with. Often times it contradicts what I wanted to hear. When I am praying, it's more of a conversation. I drop the protocol, let God guide my prayer and just hash it out with Him. I tell Him what my concerns are and he tells me what they should be, He answers my questions before I can get them out of my mouth and redirects my thoughts from the question to answer. It's a powerful experience whenever I make time. I should do more often.