Successful Prayer

People love to talk. It is in human nature. That is nothing to be ashamed of. But when people start to pray, they often begin by overflowing with words. Again, that’s all right. That’s okay. It is probably good therapy, but they are giving God a speech, not entering into supportive prayer. Please feel free to talk hysterically to God anytime if it helps. Good prayers often come after a good sermon preached to God. In your talking, clear your mind, dare to gallop yourself dead on the subject bothering you. But at sometimes afterwards, be quiet and then start really to pray as you in silence need some real communication with  Christ.

There in the fresh quiet the one to pray may finally receive, walking by the still waters, the answer that is without words given by the Good Shepherd. God’s answers tend to come without sounds and articulating  no words, but there is an answer, a certain awareness. What will the answer be? I do not know. But you will recognize it when it comes.

Remember in everyday life our words are ordinarily only the lyrics written to our feelings. Words are written by us everyday to accompany our feelings. In heaven they are not listening to the lyrics so much as to the music of your emotions. God feels your feelings as you experience them.  Christ suffers along with you and rejoices along with you. Christ's work continues always in sympathetic suffering with others. That work is never done.

Prayer is a sharing of feelings between you and God. God knows your feelings while you in silence need to share and pick up the feelings of God. If you share God’s feelings, they will uplift you. They can  strengthen you. As a new mother picks up her crying baby and holds it to her, the baby feels that love, the warmth of the mother, and the compassionate, sympathetic streams of caring flowing from the mother. The  baby responds to it and will be hushed by this, bond with the mother, be transformed by the nurturing  presence of the mother, stop crying, gurgle and go to sleep.

As the mother lifts to her the crying child, so in silent prayer shared with God, we bond to the nurturing  presence of God and through grace sense Him with us. We feel His love for us and humanity. We absorb  His warmth, His compassion, His streams of sympathetic understanding of us, His strength. His is an invisible Personality with us and we sense Him. To experience the companionship of God in silence can quiet us and inspire us. In such a silent union with God through grace is successful prayer.