Prayer Life?

Do you ever think about prayer? What it's like and how we must sound?

Lately we have been discussing this during our youth time. I think about people I used to hear praying growing up, people that pray now, and even my own. Then I think...we sound ridiculous! The more I get into the Word, it seems to me that God is about joining in with us everyday on this journey. That He desires us, and wants us to be REAL with Him. Sometimes I laugh at my own prayers because, to be honest, they are really religious. Using terms like thee, to refer to God, or thou. I never talk like that, and neither does anybody I know. I guess we think since the scripture must be in King James then our prayer life must be also.

I have been purposefully trying to break this habit of mind. One encouragement to do this is to picture myself with God--a real being, fully alive--not dead. Interacting with Him and hanging out together...living life together. This has not been easy. When trying to do this, I see how religious prayer has become in my life--that it must fit a mold, instead of living life with my Creator.

I used to think of God on His throne like the Lincoln memorial. Picturing God this way would never allow me to see how He could care for me like the scripture told me. My view on God has changed and because of it, so has my life. I realize that He desires to spend time with me, quality time, talking about real issues, and conversing with me.

I feel that many of the greats we read about in the Bible, somehow understood that--they interacted with the creator of the universe and experience Him like none other (James 5:16-18).

Does He still do that?

“I tell you the truth, anyone who sneaks over the wall of a sheepfold, rather than going through the gate, must surely be a thief and a robber! ² But the one who enters through the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. ³ The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep recognize his voice and come to him. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. ⁴ After he has gathered his own flock, he walks ahead of them, and they follow him because they know his voice. ⁵ They won’t follow a stranger; they will run from him because they don’t know his voice.”

--John 10:1-5

We do not hope God follows us around, we interact with Him, and He leads us...