4.1 What is Prayer?

The way we live our lives is changing at a rapid pace. Now, I know it might seem unbelievable but when I was your age, I didn't have a mobile phone, I know, shock horror! I can remember my dad thinking he was the coolest thing since sliced bread because he had one of the first mobile phones, which was the length of my arm and heavier than a baby panda! And also back in the day, I can remember having endless debates with my friends about small pieces of information, like who wrote a song or when a movie would come out and we wouldn't get the answer until the next day when someone had to research it in books. Actual paper books! But today your phone can answer you anything you need in a matter of seconds. This type of power at our fingertips can also create a problem for how we live our lives today. We can become people who expect an instant response to everything. Like if we want food, we can have it delivered within minutes. If we want the latest gadget, click, and it arrives. This constant sense of expectation can, unfortunately, lead to stress. I'm sure many of you have experienced the pain of being left 'on read' by a friend, we can go crazy thinking how could they do this to me. In a similar way, people express the same experience with prayer because many of us get caught in the trap of treating God like a vending machine, expecting God to instantly answer our prayers but to be honest we don't want it to work that way. Could you imagine if every person that prayed to win the lottery won, it would be total chaos! A small shift in focus can totally change how we view prayer, instead of thinking what can I get, focus on how I can connect because simply put 'prayer is communicating with God.' We have a heavenly Father who desires to be in a relationship with us and loves when we can simply hang out with Him just being ourselves, and speaking with real honesty. Now, of course, prayer can take on many forms and we can experience it in the community in special places, but what I want to stress is that we have prayer available to us 24/7 to connect with God for yourself. And God will never leave you 'on read', even though sometimes it can feel like it. We're not the only ones who struggle with prayer though, Jesus had to set people straight when he was here on Earth, as some people were using prayer to their own advantage, selfishly trying to make themselves look good by using big fancy words. Jesus said that 'When you pray, don't be like the hypocrites who like to pray publicly standing on the street corners and in the synagogues to be seen by everybody. I tell you the truth that this is all the reward that they will ever get. But when you pray, go away by yourself, shut the door, and pray to your father in private. Then your father, who sees everything, will reward you' (Matt 6:5-6). You see, God doesn't care for fancy prayers or performances, he wants the real you. For me personally, I have found that the most powerful prayers have been when I was able to be completely real and honest with God about the things that were happening in my life. I learned to come before God unafraid and ask boldly and expectantly for the things I needed help with the most and it was in these moments I experienced the benefits that Jesus spoke about. There's a verse in the Bible which has really helped me with my own prayer life. It's written by the apostle Paul in the book of Philippians and it says this, 'Don't worry about anything; instead, pray about everything, tell God what you need and thank him for all he has done then you will experience God's peace which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.' In other words, what it's saying is that if we seek God for ourselves we get to experience God for ourselves and become more like Jesus and this is why I believe prayer works because it first starts with a change in me, a better version of myself to serve in this world.