Are your thoughts like these crates when you start to pray?

There’s a little order, a few coherent sentences, but then they start tumbling down into your To Do List, or what someone said about your new hair cut, or what to make for dinner.

Prayer is conversation with God; listening to Him as we read His word, or as the Spirit speaks in the stillness of our own hearts and then talking to Him.

Prayer is spiritual, but we need our minds, our thoughts, if we’re going to pray.

I struggle with random thoughts invading when what I want is clarity and purpose in my prayers.

Here’s what I want instead:

Praying out loud helps me stay in my prayer.

It keeps my thoughts from wandering off on their own.
That’s OK when I’m gardening or vacuuming, but not when I’m talking to God.

You know how you feel when the person you’re talking with starts scanning around the room and answering with a vacant kind of “yes, un-huh”.

You know they’ve moved on, they’re done.

Well, I don’t want God to feel that way!!!

We don’t need long formalized prayers.  In fact we ought to try to listen before we speak!  Aim for clarity and brevity birthed out of a realization that God already knows my circumstances 😉

Walk prudently when you go to the house of God; and draw near to hear rather than to give the sacrifice of fools, for they do not know that they do evil.

But, God wants to hear from us.
He’s invited us to come and talk with Him.  He walked in the Garden with Adam and Eve.  He longs for our fellowship.  That’s a church word that means time spent together talking and enjoying a relationship.
It’s hanging out with Him.

Jesus said to begin a prayer with, Our Father.
To remember that He is my Father.  My provider, my protector, the one Who loves me with an everlasting love.

My newest great-grandson was just beginning to vocalize when we left for Africa.
I hung on his every ‘word’!  I encouraged him to talk to me 😉

Let your Father hear your voice today.
I hope you find it’s easier to stay in the conversation when you have a ‘speaking part’!