Praying
WHAT IS A PRAYER?
To pray means to stand in front of God with our minds and our hearts open and continue to remain before Him continually, day and night, for the rest of our lives.
To pray means to abide before God. You don’t always have to ask Him for something. You don’t always have to use words. The deepest prayer is simply to wait in front of God.
Prayer may indeed sometimes be a plea, but in its deepest manifestation, it is not a plea, but a relationship.
Prayer is communication between God and man. Man relates to God personally. Prayer is majorly a two-way communication between God and man. Prayer is not a monologue but a dialogue.
Usually, prayer is divided into three stages.
• It begins as a prayer on the lips, an oral prayer performed in words.
• It then becomes more internal and becomes a prayer of the mind or intellect. This is the beginning of true prayer.
• In the next stage, it becomes a prayer of the heart, or more precisely of the mind in the heart.
In the Bible, heart means not only the feelings and emotions of its contemporary meaning but our deep self, the inner sanctuary, the spiritual centre of the entire human personality. So heart prayer means, the prayer of the whole person – body, Soul and Spirit.
Only through Prayer, we can receive Divine Grace. We have to clearly understand that, what is up to us, in the process of our Soul Salvation, is the human part (the prayer) and we have to leave the rest to God, which is the divine part (our salvation).
A Christian, who prays should expect a word from the Lord and answers from the Lord. Fellowship with God is a personal basis of prayer. We communicate to God because we are His sons (1 John 3:1).
However, sinners who have not accepted the Lordship of Lord Jesus Christ for their salvation remain separated from God.
Even though the unbelievers may pray, they do not have the basis for a solid fellowship with God. This must make us appreciate the privilege of prayer.
There are many ways in which we can categorize the types of prayer. A simple one is the following:
The Confessional Prayer
The first kind is prayer with one’s own words – the personal, ‘confessional’ prayer. It is very comforting and we should practice it, because it aids us in combating loneliness. During this kind of prayer, we simply converse with the Lord, portraying to Him with our own thoughts our concerns to our heavenly Father.
As this prayer is a product of our heart, it is impossible for God to disregard such a prayer. However we have here two problems: the first is that we tend to close the perfect God in the very narrow frame of our vision: we want God to act when and exactly how we want. The second problem is the wanderinf of the mind.
The Linear Prayer
The second kind of prayer is the linear prayer. It is like a small story – for example “Our Father”. This kind of prayer is very beautiful because they are the personal prayers of the saints and is extensively used in the Church’s services. However this type of prayer also has a problem which is shared with the first type of prayer: the wandering of the mind.
This occurs because of the mass of informarion – that is thoughts – in the prayer, so the mind will easily wander in and out of the prayer and think about the meanings, for example, instead of praying to our Father in heaven we will start to think about our daily bread, how to acquire it and how tasty it was also!
The Cyclical Prayer: The Jesus Prayer
That’s why the most powerful prayer is the cyclical prayer, the so-called “Jesus Prayer”: “Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me”. This facility comes from it having the Name of Lord Jesus Christ, which itself is a source of divine energy, and because there isn’t many thoughts inside which will cause the mind to wander. Also, even if the mind will wander, this is very easy to observe because the cyclical prayer will cease.
Besides that, Soul Energy Noosphere Regulators will help even further because while touching them with your hands while working with them they use the sense which generates the most powerful sensations, the tactile sense, and likewise they will increase your Energy and Divine Light of God within you, so you will avoid the instability of your fallen nature.
The Types of Prayer: Conclusion
These are the types of prayer: confessional, linear and cyclical. Remember them and, also, remember when and how to use each other. We must choose wisely, depending on situation.
BENEFITS OF PRAYER
Prayer has several benefits which include:
• God’s intervention over our situation
• Defeating our fears and passions, especially our pride
• Spiritual strengthening
• Knowing the mind of God concerning a matter
• Accepting our own powerlessness and the power of God
• We acquire the ability to distinguish temptations
• Through prayer, we seek to bring the mind to absolutely nothing. We want to turn our minds to the heart and seek the grace of God in the Soul, from where it extends to the body.
• There is no indifference to the surrounding world
• Total trust and dependence on God
Praying must be without ceasing (1 Thess 5:17, Luke 18:1).
Prayer is an act of sole trust in the Almighty God for all our needs. Praying to God shows that we cannot do it by our own power.
Prayer produces virtues from the union of the Human Spirit with the Spirit of the Lord.
We have surrendered all to Him alone. A Believer cannot grow without prayer. Most importantly, the privilege of prayer for every believer is a very excellent gift of God.