In life, there are going to come those troubling times, for just about everyone, at some point and at some place, of which, some of those people are going to be much better prepared than others to deal with what has to be dealt with. When it comes to praying and petitions to our Good Lord, there are plenty of people, that pray, each and every day, though many of those people are prone to praying in a rote-like manner, but nevertheless they are consistent in such and thereby they are at least touching base with God on some level; then there are those that don’t pray a lot, but when they do, they really mean it; and finally there are those that absolutely do not pray, ever; until they are placed into a very trying circumstance, in which case they do!
The thing about prayer and our petitions to God, and then the subsequent answer to our prayers, or lack thereof, is that many people have the concept of such, all so very wrong. It could be argued, and probably should be argued, that when it comes to wisdom, none of us, holds a candle to our omniscient God; which presupposes that those that pray for this or for that, are usually and basically offtrack, for God knows what we need, better than we do; which so indicates that a better form of prayer, or possibly the only sensible form of prayer, is simply to pray for God to help us and to guide us in the making of good decisions and of being a good person, of which, thereby, we subsequently so desire that God’s will be done in and through us.
Yet, our self-centeredness for so many of us, precludes us from successfully surrendering our sovereignty to our God. That is to say, we believe that God should listen to us, and that God should therefore always respond positively to our requests. That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, from a lot of different perspectives, and especially from the perspective that of which we have often prayed for, has a strong tendency in hindsight, to be something that was actually selfish, self-serving, immoral, or just plain wrong. That said, though, there are plenty of prayers so made, that are of the category of just desiring to be healed of some pain or hurt, or said specifically on behalf of one of our family members, or for the attainment of job security, and so on and so forth, which obviously seems both reasonable as well as being prudent, in form.
Still, none of us really needs to spend an inordinate amount of time on our knees making petitions to God of what we believe we should want or desire on behalf of our own self or of others; but rather, we should instead quiet our mind and our spirit, so as to be open to the hearing of God’s voice, because God is forever trying to communicate to us, and this would be better accomplished, if only we would stop doing all of the talking, and actually learn to listen to that quiet, still voice of pure wisdom and beneficence, instead.