Prayer is one of the most important expressions of our religious life and our relationship with God.

Prayer is the avenue of our faith.  And yet prayer is one of the least understood spiritual practices.   To many, it can feel mechanical, scripted and inauthentic or unfocused.

What is prayer and why do we pray?   Do we only ask for His intervening in our lives when all seems hopeless for us or when we want some special favor that only He can bestow? 

To understand prayer, we must ask ourselves why we pray at all. 

I suggest these for your thoughts.

When we study scripture, we find a multitude of meanings and associations, each contributing to the rich tapestry of prayer’s spiritual significance. Whether we seek to reach out to something greater than ourselves or perhaps realizing our own inadequacy, as Believers we want to make a connection to the spiritual.  It’s an ongoing process. 

Prayer is an expression of intimacy with our Creator. 

Prayer is more than asking for what we need.  It is a humbling experience that highlights the great divide between petitioner and Provider.  It’s a declaration of love and an expression of spiritual longing. 

In any relationship, a natural dissonance of views and experience exists between two parties.  Our views of life’s circumstances don’t always agree with others. 

In the case of the Divine, this distance is even greater.  In God’s view we were created to fulfill a Divine mission, whereas from the human perspective, we are naturally inclined to live life solely for our own benefit and pleasure. 

In prayer, we attune ourselves to the still, small voice of the Divine, which reminds us that life is so much more than a laundry list of demands and desires, and that we are each here on a sacred mission to better our world. 

We must also judge ourselves.   In this sense it is also a time of personal reckoning, a time to evaluate and recalibrate who we really are, what we truly want in life, where we are heading, and how far along that path we have come.

We are each part body and part soul.  And yet, most of the day revolves around feeding our bodily appetites, needs and drive, strengthening our ego’s sense of our own self-worth.  Left to our own devices, over time our spiritual instincts and impulses can become mechanical or even nonexistent.     What’s there for me??

Therefore, when we pray mindfully, we are filling our hearts with thoughts and dreams of what it is that we want to see and do in this world.  Such prayerful visualizations help us shift from ourselves to how I can be of use to others. 

The point of prayer is not to remind God of what we need from Him, rather, it is to remind ourselves of what He “needs” from us!