Many people wonder how we talk to God. The answer to that is quite simple: through prayer. Prayer is where we make our requests known to God and just tell Him what we want wit our lives according to His will.

I have prayed many prayers. I know prayer is how I got to where I am today. Without prayer, I probably would've never known my grandfather. He was in the hospital in 1989, and the doctors didn't expect him to live. My grandmother said that she prayed to God daily, and also told that doctor, "You may think he won't make it, but I serve a God who is the great physician." Around Thanksgiving that year, he walked out of the VA Hospital in Birmingham, and lived fourteen years after that, when he passed in 2003.

Another example of seeing God answer prayers is my brother. In 2002, he had a pineal cyst, and they said it was pretty serious. He missed lots of school that year, and had to meet a tutor at a church close to our house. My grandmother first called 104.7 WZZK, during the Rick and Bubba Show (this was prior to 93.7 WDJC doing "A Call to Prayer" on Wednesdays), then she called Oneonta radio station (which was 97.7 WKLD at the time), asking them to pray for him on the radio. They did. With that, we received prayers and cards from all over the country. When my brother went to the doctor for a checkup on the cyst, it was gone. God answered our prayers, and my brother is healthy today!

Prayer is our direct phone line to God. We can talk to Him at anytime, whether we are in the valley and things seem bleak, like in the two examples above, as well as when we are on the mountaintop and everything is going our way. Jesus gives us a model of how to pray in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6:5-13, where we find the Lord's Prayer. This prayer shows us that we show reverence to God as our Heavenly Father, ask for His will to be done in all things, forgive others, forgive us of our sins, and to deliver us from evil.

So how can prayer help in times of anxiety, the topic of last week's article? A passage of Scripture that I love is Philippians 4:6-7, which says, "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus (ESV)." What this passage means is, that whatever we face, we have to take it to God.

When walking through a series on anxiety with Jesse at Engage, he gave us a two-step process to overcoming anxiety. The first step is to go to God in prayer. Going to God in prayer is the best thing we can do in all situations. Next, tell God the outcome you want. This can be in the form of asking for a parent to be healed from cancer or for peace and comfort to make it through a difficult week. Whatever the situation, make that request known to God. I would go as far to say to ask for His will to ultimately be done in the situation.

When going through this process, we will find God's peace in the midst of anxiety. We can have confidence in knowing that the situation is in God's hands, and He is in control.