Did you try to talk to God yesterday? How did it go? It can be a difficult practice to begin for one obvious reason, you can't see God (or text, email, tweet or facebook God). Also, if you are not familiar with God's voice it can be really hard to hear God so sometimes you feel like you are in a one-sided conversation. But, don't fear because one thing you know for sure, God hears you. The question most people who are trying to talk to God for the first time want to know is HOW DO I TALK TO GOD (I mean it's GOD)???
Well the bible (the scary thing that you can't understand and fall asleep trying to read because all the words blend together on the page) does have some instructions about how to pray. The thing you need to keep in mind at all times as you are attempting to open the lines of communication between you and God is to keep it simple. People who have been to church get thrown off because we have heard people praying these super-deep prayers and we think we are supposed to be able to pray like that. Not true. Many times people praying in church are giving invocations, not basic prayer (we won't even get into what an invocation is, most adults probably are not even familiar with the term). The kind of prayer you need to embark on is simple communication, you are just going to start having conversations with God.
THE BIBLE SAYS: Did you know that the bible actually says, when you pray, keep it simple, don't use a bunch of extra words because God knows what you need anyway? (Matthew 6:7 ESV- English Standard Version, remember LOOK UP YOUR BIBLE TRANSLATIONS ONLINE! You don't have to read the King James version that most people can not understand). The bible also gives you a simple model for praying which you can think of as the A.C.T.S. model. Read the next post to get the A.C.T.S. model and find out how you can talk to God minus stress and/or boredom.
Umm, in the risk of sounding uneducated, which I am not (not totally anyways), I am one of those adults who just had to look up the word invocation...thanks for the insight...and yes when I pray some of the time it starts off simple. Yeah Lord, its me again, standing in the need of prayer, along with some other folks whose names are Hubby, Sarah, Mary, and Sue, oh yeah dont forget about Bobby and
ReplyDeleteTina...help me to see my own faults too, because I mos def have the tendency to see others at the 3D perspective, that I sometimes overlook my own...Help me to be more like you.