Do you pray? What benefits do you experience?
Sometimes people don’t know how to pray or may think they get into a rut of sorts. A prayer can quickly turn into a laundry list of needs or desires, but prayer is so much more than that.
At its most simple, prayer is a conversation with God. We can talk to Him as we would anyone else we have a close relationship with. When we speak to our parents or spouses or friends, we don’t just ask for things, do we?
To have a meaningful relationship, we share life experiences, ask them how they are doing, say thank you and invest time in them. So it is with our relationship with the Lord.
Here are five elements of prayer we can use to up our prayer game: praise and worship, acknowledge blessings, repent and forgive, requests, and speaking the Word.
Beginning a prayer with praise and worship gives God the proper respect and demonstrates putting Him first in our lives. Let’s tell Him something we like about Him. What about Him makes us happy?
Next, we can thank Him for the blessings in our lives. This could be from a warm bowl of oatmeal on a chilly day to the apartment that popped up in the nick of time.
Then we also need to acknowledge where we could improve in our lives. If we let our stress get the best of us and snapped at a coworker, then tell God about it and ask for forgiveness.
Following that is a good time to ask God for what we need and what others need.
Finally, we should have a couple of scriptures from the Bible to say out loud. These could be about who God is, who we are in Christ or relate to something in our lives that we’re going through. For example, if you need healing or peace, then find a scripture that addresses it. There is a scripture for every single situation we may find ourselves in. Speaking His Word out loud brings about action and blessings.
This is a good starting point to get into the swing of things. Then, as we grow more and more comfortable with prayer and more confident in our relationship with the Lord our prayer lives will further develop.
Anecdotal evidence and some scientific evidence indicate that an active prayer life helps with optimism, coping, depression, anxiety and more. Of course, there are many many testimonies of the power of prayer.
I realize not all folks are Christian or believers of Jesus Christ. Take what you wish from this column and apply it to your situation. You do you. Like Joshua from the Bible said, “choose you this day whom you will serve ... as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
As we continue into this holiday season and as we approach Christmas and a brand new year, may you all be greatly blessed.
Lauren Bearden is assistant editor at The News Observer. She can be reached at 706-632-2019 or by email at lauren@thenewsobserver.com.