I know, I talk a lot about prayer. Kinda like I know what I'm doing, right? Well, I don't. I'm learning. Prayer is probably the most important thing in my life. It's also the most lacking. But I'm getting better.

I try to start my prayer day as soon as I wake up - before I face the world. I don't always make it. But, like this morning, after my wife left for work, I had a good long conversation with God.
During the day, I will chat with Him. It's happening more and more as I come to believe He's not this distant deity that has created us for His own entertainment. I'm learning that God is personal and is here with me at every moment.
When the kids go to bed, the four of us hold hands and pray. Even the two year old says, "God, Momma, Daddy, Cole, 'Men!" That's her way of thanking Him for Momma, Daddy and her sister Nichole. We are also encouraging Nichole (almost seven) to pray with less rote and more feeling. Train up a child...
Then, later at night, Kerense and I hold hands and say a prayer of blessing over our family, our city, our country, the USA and the world. We also use this time to mention any individual prayer concerns like friends and family who are having problems. This time grew out of her need to re-connect with God. She felt cut off and unable to pray, so I grabbed her hands one night and began praying. It's a wonderful month-old tradition!
Finally, after all that is done, she and I both have individual prayer time in which we focus on our individual commune with God through the Holy Spirit. During this time, we mention some of the inner requests, including confidential prayer requests of our friends and family that cannot be shared among people.

How to pray

I've heard that Jesus teaches that prayer should consist of four components:

Adoration
Confession
Thanksgiving
Supplication - asking for stuff

This acrostic tells us about the order in which we should pray. Not that God's gonna ignore you if you skip a step, but these are important. So, I try to remember each of these. Today I'll go into a little detail about how I pray.

Adoration
This is the worship portion of prayer. This is where you tell God how much you love Him. This is where you tell God how awesome He is - as if He didn't already know. The folks that teach about praising God say that He wants to hear it from your lips. That's where I have trouble. Any words I can say cannot possibly edify Him. I can say He's awesome. Or, rather, I can say He's AWESOME!!! But that's still an insult to Him 'cuz He's so much more than just plain AWESOME. How do you praise God? What can you possibly say that would edify Him?

Confession
I used to have a lot of problems with Confession. I grew up in the Methodist Church where there were four prayers during every service: Prayer of Praise, Prayer of Confession, Prayer of Thanksgiving, Prayer of [something - I don't remember the name but it meant supplication!]. Anyway, I had a lot of trouble with confession. After all, who were those preachers up there saying that I was a sinner and didn't "deserve the crumbs from under God's table"? If I had sinned, and that's a really big 'if', then I still wasn't a bad guy and at least deserved a burger if God's serving steak...
Well, I got that straightened out in my head. I now know that I'm a sinner. No, I don't try to recount every transgression in my life. If I were to do that, I would have no time to do anything but. My heart's a black hole of nastiness. It's taking the Holy Spirit a while to get it all clean. And, when He's working hard, I just run back to the enemy and let him mess it up some more. So, I can sin even when I'm praying.

Thanksgiving
In the last couple of years, I've been extremely thankful for a lot of things. My kids, sunshine, a roof over my head and food on my table. As our finances grow tighter and tighter, and we learn to rely on God more and more, I learn to thank Him for the little things. Each day is a gift from Him. Each breath is. So, much to the chagrin of my kids at nighttime prayers, my thankfulness exceeds standard time limits. And it's getting longer each day as God blesses me more and more.

Supplication
If I'm such a dirty rotten sinner (see the paragraph above about my black heart), how do I have the right to ask a Holy and Pure God for anything? Well, James, the brother of Jesus, said:

"You do not have, because you do not ask God." That tells me that if we are in need of something we should ask for it.
"When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures." That tells me that I need to ask in pure heart, trusting God to bring me pleasure and peace.

I am not a good man. I would like to be God's shining example of a Christian Life. I know that pleasure was reserved for one man: Jesus Christ, Himself. Me, I am content knowing that I live as best I can. If I slip up and allow myself to be deceived by the enemy, God will not abandon me no matter how far I fall. If I do not feel His presence, it is because I moved away from him.

So, that's my prayer life. One day, I hope to be open to His words so that I can live the life He wants me to. But that fodder for another topic.

Thanks for posting this in here....I read it in your journal...it's awesome, thanks for sharing...