Prayer

The purpose of this website is to share what I have learned. Most of the time we learn the hard way. That isn't the most pleasant way to learn but the lesson does stick with us and can become a productive part of our life. Sometimes, but not as often, we learn the easy way. It takes more diligence to remember these lessons of life, maybe because we didn't have to work at learning the lesson.

This blog centers around prayer. I have spent a good deal of my life learning about prayer. It seems everyday there is a new aspect of prayer to learn that I had not thought of previously. One thing I do know is that it is a great joy to experience answered prayer. There are so many aspects to what constitutes answered prayer. Our attitude counts for a lot, our maturity of what we can handle, our trust, applying God's Word to our prayers, sincerity, etc.

I grew up on a farm, in a small German community of rural Detroit, Michigan. Everyone seemed to attend the local Lutheran Church. My life was centered around God. I attended the Lutheran school that my father attended when he was a little boy. I went to school with cousins and the kids of the people from the community. Church attendance meant seeing the whole family every Sunday (aunts, uncles, grandparents, great aunts, great uncles, all of the neighbors, your insurance man, grocer, butcher). Yes it was a little like living on little house on the prairie only with a motor city twist. After church we always gathered at Grandma's house and had a party.

The first prayer we ever learned was from Grandma. She would teach all the children who could barely speak to say: "Abba, bitty. Amen" This prayer sparked quite a fight between my Grandmother who was a staunch German Lutheran and my mother who only was a bit German but also Macedonian, Irish, English, Welch, etc. My mother asked why my Grandmother was teaching the kids to pray a Hebrew prayer. That made grandma hopping mad. The answer was never found.

Around age two or three, we learned to say "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take." Then we would ask God to bless Mama, Daddy, Carrie, Sherry (siblings), all the aunts and uncles, grandparents, etc. We would also say thank you for all of our blessings. My sister told me recently that she would always thank God for her eyes, nose, mouth, ears, face, neck, arms, legs, etc. She has always had a good self-image of herself and takes good care of her health. For meals, we never ate before thanking God for our food and asking Him to bless it to our nourishment.

By the time we attended kindergarten, we knew the "Lord's Prayer," and began to learn about asking for forgiveness and searching our hearts to see if we were holding any unforgiveness toward anyone.

Through the years I have enjoyed many books and lectures on the subject of prayer. From time to time as I think of it, I will add to this blog some of the things I have learned to pray and why.

I have learned through necessity that without asking God for help there were some things that I would not be able to do on my own. I also learned from a young age to be responsible. When these two areas are combined that makes a winning combination.

Many times I would pray expecting a totally different answer than what was received but it always fit the bill. I want to share some of the answers that I received. Maybe some of these experiences can be helpful to others navigating through life. Or maybe some of these experiences will give others a different way of looking at things.

I don't necessarily like to just take someone's word for something. I like to ask questions, explore, and experiment with Bible principles. I love to ask God how to do basic things like pray, where I should attend church, how I should be living, etc. When reading the Bible or any other books, I like to ask God his opinion and if He could show me what something means. In listening to lectures, I like to ask God to help me follow something as it follows Christ. He has never let me down but I have let God down by not spending time with Him and including Him in many decisions I have made. I have found that even in some of the darkest times of my life, God has a wonderful sense of humor and He always gives me balance. I don't always like God's answers. I usually know when I am hearing from God because it is usually opposite to my thinking especially when I haven't been spending time with Him. His answers have always worked.
He has always been faithful.