I'm a Whi-i-i-ner

Today's question: Are there ways of weaving prayer into your life that you have found particularly satisfying in the past?

Today's note: We can invite God into our lives and ourselves into God's. When we do that, putting ourselves on a personal footing with God, so to speak, relationship heats up and a potential for extraordinary friendship stirs to life. For God is a Person, too, and though a person unlike ourselves, One who surely fulfills more of what that word means, not less.

I am beginning to think I sound like a whiner. Anyone remember the bit on Saturday Night Live called the Whiners. "I'm a Whi-i-i-ner."
http://www.hulu.com/watch/275071/saturday-night-live-the-whiners-at-snl


What does the question mean by "satisfying?" Satisfying to whom? To me? To Him? On the human level, how could anything I do be satisfying to God. On the spiritual level, He is "delighted" with me with or without prayer. The question must mean satisfying to me. So the answer is No, I have never found a consistent way to pray that has satisfied me. I always feel tongue-tied, even in private. If words begin to come, the thoughts don't. I've used the alphabet before, heading down A, B, C, praying for people with last names starting A, B, C but I would rarely get to D before succumbing to other thoughts or real distractions. I've tried to "pray without ceasing," but then I stop. I heard someone preach on that verse before saying to maintain an "attitude of prayer" or a consciousness of God's closeness. But when Jesus asked his disciples to pray, I don't think he meant maintain an attitude of prayer. Then there are the so-called prayer warriors. Talk about feeling inadequate. Attend a prayer meeting with prayer warriors.

To learn more about myself and prayer is the reason I am writing this. I hope by writing words down I might come to a better understanding of prayer. I hope God hears my written words as well as my spoken ones.

Then there's the subject of God as a person. When Jesus walked on this planet, I understand that he was a person, in that he was human, a God-man. In evangelical circles it follows that a person needs a "personal relationship" with Jesus. I understand that Jesus died for my sins and that as the son of God, he and he alone could have done that. He is God, he is spirit and truth, the word of God, light, and in Christ all the atoms and subatomic particles in the universe are held together. "God in three persons, blessed Trinity," goes the old song. Why am I having so much trouble getting this. Maybe that's also why personal prayer seems sometimes odd and strange to me. I am talking to the One who created the wind.
Numbers 23:9
God is not human, that he should lie,
   not a human being, that he should change his mind.
Does he speak and then not act?
   Does he promise and not fulfill?