He Speaks to You, Now You Speak to Him

If you are hearing a lot from God and He is continually speaking to you through His Word, Pastors, Bible studies, etc. Then I would suggest that you start talking to God about what He has said to you. He cares about your relationship with Him and you will only become closer to Him if you pray.

If you had a friend and you never talked to them, would you be really good friends with that person? Probably not. This is the same with God. How can you get to know someone if you never talk to them? You may have thought that reading His Word and going to church was enough, but I would say that it’s not.

Just like how if you have a friend, being in the same room with them and not speaking to them is not going to make you any closer to them. Neither is reading a book they wrote or just hearing someone else read that book. You need to talk to them.

But you might be thinking prayer is intimidating. If you have this idea that prayer means that you have to kneel down and pray for hours, that is not true and no wonder you are intimidated. You might get to a point where God asks you to do this, but if He doesn’t, you don’t have to. So don’t overthink it.

Prayer is just talking to God as if He is your friend. If you don’t pray very much, I would suggest just talking to God about your day, like you would with a friend. On your commute to work instead of listening to music or a podcast just talk to God. Tell Him your worries and cares, tell Him about your likes and dislikes, tell Him what your job is like, what you like about it and what you don’t like.

It may sound silly to do this because you are thinking to yourself “God already knows all of that and I don’t want to bore Him.” Well, first off you are probably thinking this because the last thing the enemy wants you to be doing is talking to God and he will try to get you to talk yourself out of it. And secondly, I agree with you, yes God already knows all of that, but I would also like to argue that I was the quiet kid in school who knew everyone’s name, how old they were, who their friends were, who their family was, etc. but none of that actually made me friends with them.

It is only when we step out of our comfort zone and talk to them that we can actually be friends. I would say prayer is the same way, it is a little bit uncomfortable at first, but the more you do it the more comfortable you become. After a while you will find yourself doing it all the time (sometimes not even realizing it), because you will realize that He loves you so much. He very well might become your best friend and then you will want to tell Him everything.

The last thing I want to say is this whenever you get the chance, pray out loud with other people. Just do it. Because the power of prayer in the presence of other people can't be measured and you need to show other people how to talk to God too. Don’t be afraid. If you are an introvert, remember when you are praying with other people you are talking to a friend not a stranger and focus on that. Don’t try to impress the people around, just talk to God. You may need to spend more time talking to God by yourself to get to the point where you see Him as a friend and that will help immensely.

Praying could change your life as you become closer to God and get to know Him more. It could also change the lives of other people as you pray for them more, and as you choose to step out of your comfort zone and pray for people in person. Prayer brings the person who prays, and the people who hear it closer to God, because at the heart of who we are we want to talk to God.