What is prayer and how do we know if it works?
We have official prayers, depending on the culture and the background of whoever is praying. Here, we pray as a collective. We have individual, private, prayers that serve as a way to communicate with God. We convey messages, hopes, despairs and desires that are ours and ours alone. Prayer is, essentially, communicating with the divine. Sometimes with words, sometimes without words, we could say – telepathically – and at times our intentions convey what we wish God to know. Some people pray only in places of religious worship, some people believe that, since the Lord is omnipresent and omniscient, prayer can happen anywhere, without a special ritual and carefully recited words involved. A spontaneous prayer.
Some pray without wanting anything in return. Some pray in the hope of getting something in return from a deceased person who intervenes on our behalf. A heavenly business exchange of sorts. I pray for you, and you go to God and intervene on my behalf. Is that really an honest prayer when our intention is so ”business-like”? Who knows how the Almighty sees it. Some pray for family and friends, while others pray for all sorts of people, even strangers and criminals.
Men and women have different praying styles, sometimes they wear different clothes, and often pray for different things. Some of it is by choice, while sometimes what we pray for and how we pray is socially enforced and a conditioning process of sorts steers us in a desired direction and then we don’t even know how to pray differently or feel strange doing so. This dynamic kind of reminds me of dancing where a man leads and a woman pirouettes and does other annoying, eye-pleasing, things. No one asks her if she’s annoyed by it – just how dancing is done.
Indeed, a person praying to God implicitly acknowledges the Lord’s superiority. It’s not said but it’s there. Implied.
So, how do we know that our prayer has been heard and it’s not just our wishful thinking? I believe that when we look at our tapestry of life, we’ll know. It’s best to have a clear intention and verbalize what we want. Even in our minds. And then, when looking at our lives, we just might find that God has indeed intervened – it just doesn’t have to be linear (we pray and we get what we prayed for).
Our prayer can be answered in all sorts of ways – the Lord is by no means linear and what we pray for today can come true in a year and we’ll only understand it by taking a panoramic view at our lives. It’s vital to be honest with ourselves and not call God derogatory names just because our prayers haven’t been answered the way we have wanted. The Creator isn’t our cosmic ATM. He will answer what He wishes to answer, when He wishes to answer, and in a manner He wishes answer – if at all. Arrogantly asking God, demanding to get what we want can end in a lesson in humility. The Lord wants to hear our prayers but we need to know who’s ultimately in charge of the universe.