When you boil it right down, all prayer is, is a conversation between two people when one of them just happens to be God.
Yes, He is omnipotent. Yes, He is holy. Yes, He is the creator of the universe and the judge of our motives. Of course! But He's also a person. He created us to be persons so that we could communicate with Him. He desires to communicate with us. So when we pray, we tell Him what is on our minds, thank Him for listening ... and then (something we may miss) we listen to what He has to say. The better we become at listening, the longer the interaction lasts; it spills out into the day as He goes with us. The prayer becomes a constant conversation. Hearing His voice gets easier to do. We get to know what His will is, and we do it out of gratitude to Him. The more we let God do His will through us, relying on His strength alone, the fewer mistakes we'll make, and the more confident we become that He is listening and will do what is best: in us, through us, and for us as well as for those other people (whoever they are) for whom we pray.
It's like learning to dance. You don't get it perfect the first time. One person leads, the other follows his lead.
I was talking to my mother yesterday and she reminded me of one of the activities that she and Dad used to do together - they used to go to barn dances. There was a fiddler and a square-dance caller and everything! They took me along once; I would have been about 12 years old, I guess. It's one of my better memories growing up. I even got to dance!!
At a certain portion of every barn dance, the group dancing (square-dancing) was over with and the waltzing would start.
Dad would ask Mom to dance with him. And it was awkward for both of them. She didn't know the steps; he didn't have the patience to teach her without getting annoyed. She felt stupid and he felt frustrated. Eventually he just took her to dances but danced with other people while she watched ... and then he just went and sat the waltzing part out. After a while they stopped going altogether. She told me, "I didn't mind going to the dances at all, and I wasn't jealous of him dancing with those other women. I just wished he would have told me what he wanted."
I grinned at her. "You know what the problem was don't you Mom?" She shook her head. I continued, more of a statement than a question. "You tried to lead .... didn't you." She kind of looked sheepish and I knew that was it. Letting him lead was how she could have learned how to dance.
One learns by doing - in dancing - in prayer - in life.
Dad was a novice dancer and he didn't know what was wrong; he just knew that whenever he went one way, she went another. They ended stepping on each others' toes. And after a while that can be very discouraging. Letting someone lead implies you trust the person to never lead you astray. Mom and I didn't go there in our conversation. She continued on to talk about other things. But it got me to thinking.
I heard guidance described in this way before - it's a dance. The GUI at the first stands for God, U and I. So God, you and I dance. It is a great analogy for prayer as a life-conversation. In connection with Him, close enough for conversation and taking cues and leading from Him. (Of course when WE try to lead we get frustrated and end up looking and feeling foolish...) But as we let go of our need to control every situation and let God do it - we get better at it.
And God can take us places in Him we never thought we'd go. All we need to do is accept His invitation ... and let Him lead.
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