The easiest thing for me to do is pray. The hardest thing for me to do is pray.
It's easy to pray. You sit down, you close your eyes and clasp your hands, and you talk to God about anything. The posture itself is not so important. In fact, some of my prayers come from my walk from home to work, with my eyes wide open. My prayers are mostly a recount to God about my life, any complaints I have, or great news that I want to share. When I pray, I feel like I'm talking to a friend who cares about me like a father does.
Sometimes, I start my prayers with, "What's up, God, it's me again." I recently learned a method of prayer called Praying in Color from the book by Sybil Macbeth. The main idea is to simply pray for someone by drawing out their name and decorating the page. Sometimes I don't know what or how to pray for someone, so I use this method to simply talk to God about this person. After I'm done drawing and coloring, I say an affirmative "Amen" to end my prayer.
Sometimes, it's hard to pray, especially when I know I've messed up. At times like these, when I know I've hurt someone intentionally or by accident, I end up cutting off prayer with the Lord. I go weeks without praying. After all, which friend would care to hear how I went back to an addiction time and time again?
Repentance and confession prayers are tough for me, too. I'm not a big fan of telling God that I screwed up. At these times, I recently learned to think of the Prodigal Son story.
When I was little, I disliked the prodigal son because I was more like the brother. Now, when I think about how the father's emotions toward the son, I feel like I can talk to a God who has the same type of fatherly love. I can tell him that I'm sorry for how I acted toward someone else or how I want to change my bad habits. After weeks go by, I realize that my life is not going well so I return back to prayer.
At Basileia 2018, an Intervarsity conference mid-May, I learned about prayer in the transforming prayer track. There was the Lion's Roar prayer, the ninja prayer, intercession prayer, and other types. I even bought some books about prayer. As I continue to read books on prayer, I hope to continue to grow in my prayer life. It's so basic.
What about you? What is your prayer life like? What kind or types of prayers do you pray?
