Prayer - just thoughts...

A friend asked that I write this though I don't know exactly how to put it in words which is the point exactly. Huh...

Sometimes I have a difficult time praying out loud, not out of embarrasment but out of lack of practice, not lack of practice in praying but rather in putting my prayers in words.

When I want to communicate with another person, fist I have to encode my thoughts into words and then the other person has to receive and decode them for their original meaning. I think many times people forget that God does not require this encoding and decoding. When I pray, I feel the Lords leading to pray for my wife in a certain area, in my mind I "visuallize" it and simply say yes Lord. Again I don't know how to put this practice into words but it is a way that I can understand prayer as a two way communication with God rather than giving God my Christmas list. I am open to the thoughts that he brings my way and I am open to agree with him. Or I am open to express the internal feelings without having to process them into words and present them before God in trust.

Being that it is just thoughts, I can cover a lot of prayer ground very fast, not to say that I free up more time but rather that I can pray about more things. After being practiced I understand what the scriptures mean when they say "pray at all times" because my prayers are more of a consciousness of God near me and a real-time processing of my circumstances in his presence, I can be in a constant mode of prayer, constantly in communication with God. This takes many forms many of which are too hard to explain but I thought I would give an attempt to explain something so central to who I am and how I live that does not exist in words.

Talk to God without using words and open yourself up to what he has to say as well as communicate the deep things inside you that you don'tknow how to communicate and process them together with God and the reading of scripture. I would encourage you give it a try... that is if you can make any sence of the ramble that I just typed.