Relating to God and trying to understand

Prayer. What is it actually for? I started to think about why praying is such a non existent thing in my life. Because it doesn’t do anything. Because I never see the results I want, I never hear anything or get a direct response. I never know what to really say that isn’t already understood between God and I. I guess those are the top things that come to mind. When I get down to the real concept of prayer for us humans, I think it’s a way of being honest and sharing our lives with God. Culturally I think we have prayer backwards, like most things, we think it’s a formula, or you only do it at certain times. Also culturally, prayer becomes this part of our spirituality that only gets expressed on Sunday mornings, or Saturday nights lately. I guess the more and more I think about prayer being the way I can communicate with God, it makes more sense that it’s a form to let God know where I am at. Like hey today sucks, this place sucks, and why did you create such a suck world for me to exist in. But really God hears, I am having a hard time not letting this place get to me, I am having a hard time not feeling insignificant, I need some help, I need someone to care about me, I need you to be here in person, not this microphone in my mind that some how sends a signal to you. I think prayer isn’t something that God can just respond to and have it be that. First, because it would defeat his purpose of existing as God, as if we have some kind of wavering control on what God will do if we ask enough. It would also defeat our purpose to live and have free will. I think it’s a place to just be real with God. He knows what you think when you think it and how you feel when you feel it, but it also is a good place to just get stuff out there, off your chest, so it’s been said. There is something psychological about it, when you keep things inside or hidden, it has a way of making you less aware of what is important right now because you are still holding on to all that stuff. It is hard to not be disappointed when you pray for something and it doesn’t happen. I also think it’s hard to only have that type of relationship with God, where you ask for things and that’s it, so when things don’t happen, you either feel mad at God and think he doesn’t exist, or you feel unable to be good enough that God wouldn’t do that for your life. We should be aware that we shape a lot of the world in its fallen state. We do a lot of the damage to each other, and expect God to do the damage control. I don’t think God will ever treat his creation like they are stupid and can’t figure anything out. If God was like that, he for sure wouldn’t have given us this example of how to try to live in Jesus, knowing we would never get it, and never be capable of following after it. People can pray and know that God is listening, not that he is going to drastically change his game plan because you are hurting or someone is in great need of something. I think it’s a way for God to be God. It is similar to relationship between children and parents, you may curse at them about not being able to do something, that they know isn’t good for you, but they still won’t let you do it. You might realize that as you get older, what they were doing when you were so frustrated with them was caring about your whole life, and not just your emotions that sporadically change everyday. Also something bad happening to you or those close to you, we can’t always just ask God to change it or explain it. For example, when your friend dies and you don’t know what else to do, or you want someone to change it and bring them back, parents like God, just hold you and let you know it’s going to be ok, because it’s part of life and things happen. I cannot change it, because if I did, I would have to rewrite history, and I would ultimately defeat your purpose to exist. Our existence is what makes God our God. If God did whatever we ask, it isn’t God, it is just a genie in a bottle, a cosmic parent who is a unwilling to sacrifice his own image of being loved for doing everything I want. Its kind of like the parents you watch that give into their child’s whaling about something they want. The child will probably grow into a crazy power hungry person who thinks they deserve everything in the world. I think God is God and knows what he is doing, and to put trust in that is to have faith that when I don’t or do receive something I don’t glorify God for the answered prayer, or say I am not faithful enough or God doesn’t exist when the prayer isn’t answered. I should look to the beauty of what is demonstrated on the Cross. It’s a switch. We are human and screw up everything. We can shape truth into deception and say God screwed something up, but that is your own deception of what is real. We are given a chance to switch. We bring our hurt, pain, deception, dissatisfaction, discontentment, worst fears, and all of our baggage to the cross. We sit there and wait, and wonder what it is exactly we are doing, is this even going to work. But it has already been working and already happened. It’s when you are ready to trade with God. He has this huge operation running throughout life. Where we come as a suspicious consumer with all of our stuff, we look around and see all this truth of what we really are, who we are, what life is really about. We turn and look around us and see all are exhausted stuff and think there is no possible way I could trade anything I have for any of the stuff here. It’s right then that God is in your face when you look back up and says, there is no harm in asking. It is up to us, it’s our choice to accept what is already there as truth, or to stop believing and living in all the lies around us. I think prayer is like this, we talk about something with God, we build relationship and grow with him. Eventually we work out this already designed partnership with God and we trade, we trade ideas, truths, love and everything we have backwards. We get to grow something new with this trade. It doesn’t really matter what we start to grow in this love alone, it is about this relationship with God that we start to grow, and reflect to everything around us. We become good people, friends, parents, siblings, and partners. I mean good in the sense that we know truth and always reflect that in love to ourselves and others. We start turning the world upside down, we build this community that God can always work in. We start to see the truth in this place and its value for being here. I ultimately see prayer as a tool, it’s a tool of being open and honest. It’s communication with God, who knows us best. If you have ever had a hard time communicating with someone, because they just don’t understand what you are saying, it’s a hard thing to continue being open and honest. It is hard to continue communicating without a purpose. I believe God loves us individually, and delights in us communicating throughout the day, even when we don’t understand. I think if we did understand, we wouldn’t need to pray at all, we would just do what we do everyday. It is interesting to see how much we like to act like we understand, and we know exactly what we are doing and why. At the end of it all, I think prayer is what we are internally designed for. I think a lot of us are praying without recognizing that it’s prayer. I believe a lot of us want God to just say something back so that we know and understand, but I think he doesn’t work that way. It’s trust and faithfulness out of love that he wants from us. We always have a choice, each day is a brand new choice, even though at the cross it is always the same choice of love and grace, we always have a choice to believe God is there and he is doing what he does best. Being God.