Prayer - the Way to Communicate with God

There are many conversational skills we need to learn in a relationship. We try to communicate with others something goes astray. We say one thing, the other person hears something else, and misunderstandings, frustration, and conflicts ensue. In this essay prayer is discussed as the most important component of communication with God. 

Throughout the Bible, I personal understand the word--prayer meaning communication with God. Nowadays, there are so many tools, book, talk or course to teach people how to communicate with others or our own self. Someone might think prayer is easy. The power and desire to pray are deeply embedded in us. Since we are made for and for God, how can we not pray? This is our mother tongue and our first language. When we are in deep trouble, we will cry out for help from God; when we are gracious to the Lord, we will profess to thank God. 'Help!' And 'Thank you!' Are our basic prayers; the tone is short and simple. But prayer will not always be so simple. We are struggling in the wilderness of experimentation, and after a few years we will begin to question our childlike simplicity at first. We are immersed in a generation of satirical beliefs, and contempt and doubt have eroded our original innocence. Prayer is a conversation with God. God speaks to us, calls us, has compassion on us, and loves us. He came among us and entered into us. And we answer, respond, accept, receive, praise Him. In short, we pray. It's that simple. What else is there?

We are far more interested in ourselves than in God; we focus on everything that happens or doesn't happen inside. The huge differences between personal feelings and intentions confuse us; the moral allegations questioning whether we deserve prayer are disturbing; the secrets that claim to make us special spiritual elites are deeply intriguing.

But prayer is primarily God, not us. Of course, all of us are included in prayer, but God comes first. The theologian's task is to train us to begin with God as a prayer, not to start our prayers with personal thought, imagination, and understanding. However, this may disturb us because we need human attention.

However, focusing on God is more important. Only by focusing solely on the prayer of God can we restore the original simplicity; the prayer that begins with it is enough. Prayer is the most private thing everyone can do, and it's the most human action that they can participate in. When we pray, we are more like ourselves than at any other moment, because at this moment we are the most authentic and most divine image. This is the glory of prayer, but it is also the difficulty of praying because these of us are often more interested in ourselves than in God. The fact is that we cannot trust ourselves in prayer. By our own power, we become selfish-we can only concentrate on our sense of reverence, our religious progress, or our spiritual position. We need guides and experts to redirect our attention to God; we need their reminder: God's Word is the most important.

To sum up, in refocusing on God, we need to pay attention to everything that entangles us: disturbing doubts, taunts, and seduces. We need the help of alert theologians. Good theologians will bring us skill, focus, and patience, and help us to put God first in prayer.