Telling God What I Want

I’ve heard of a book with the title “Conversations with God” but didn’t read it and don’t know anything about it. Its Wikipedia entry describes the author’s conception of God as a divine force that sounds more like a mashup of Hinduism, Sikhism, and other philosophies.

The conversations I’m having with God is with the personal triune God of Christianity as revealed in the Bible. Want to be clear for new readers to this blog. Now, let me turn my attention to talk with my dear God while you listen in.

Starting My Conversation with God

When it comes to talking with You, the traditional rituals of prayer are good and all, but they seem to make prayer harder than it needs to be. Granted, there are appropriate times and contexts where a serious prayer session gets our minds and hearts focused on the bigness and majesty and power of You as the God Almighty.

But not everyone knows that much about You yet to talk with You. Some people don’t know if You exist or not. Some people believe in other faith traditions or other philosophies. I know for me that Christianity has been the best path and most personal way that I’ve found to connect with You. And, I need all the help I can get for this daily thing called life. I don’t have the time and energy to go researching and investigating all kinds of different faiths and religions.

Telling God What I Want to See Happen

What I do want to see happen as people read this blog, is that they will see how easy it is to talk with You. In ordinary everyday language, I can talk with You anytime anywhere. And that’s a good thing, a very good thing. Instead of making prayer hard, and there are times when it is and ought to be, there is also this wide open time when people can talk with God freely and do it in a way that doesn’t sound weird.

As a writer and blogger, I mostly talk with you quietly in my mind. Occasionally, you know, I will talk out loud when talking with you, but usually, I will reserve that to the privacy of my own car or room.

There are certain words and phrases that unlock things in my heart and soul. Things and thoughts and ideas that were previously locked. The title of this opening prayer is one of them—telling You what I want.

When that phrase came to my mind, it opened me up to talk with You more often and more freely. I thank You for that! The phrase that echoes and energizes me is: “tell God what I want.”

You know my life story and how it’s been quite an unexpected adventure. Getting in touch with the feelings and convictions that are at depths of my heart and soul, my being and personality, that has taken a long time and effort. This phrase is my most recent discovery about prayer. I can just talk to You in my own voice, in my own language, and You are willing to listen. That is what I believe and I’m learning about.

When I talk to You this way—maybe it’s called stream of consciousness—I’m unhindered and not holding anything back. I’m also free to share honestly about my desires and wants.

You know my thoughts already anyways. But there is a whole different experience that I need to go through by intentionally talking with You: to thank You for each and everything in life as I notice it, to ask for Your help for those in need, to rest in Your goodness, to remember the work of your invisible hand in and around my life.

Don’t they say praying is just talking to God?

Time to close this post. Thank You for this time to hear my heartbeat and to hear what I want. I don’t say it to be demanding. I do tell you what I want to get more of myself behind the pleas that I want to have your attention and your answers for. I want You to sustain me through this 30-week blogging and prayer experience. I want You to bring the right readers to this blog, people from all kinds of faith backgrounds and even those who don’t think they have any faith, and those that are not sure.

I want You to bring the right readers to this blog, people from all kinds of faith backgrounds and even those who don’t think they have any faith, and those that are not sure. All kinds of people pray, like Pastor Rick Warren said in a recent sermon, but they’re not praying to you as a personal God, the One who created the everything.

I want people to experience Your goodness when people talk with You and I want you to respond to them (answer their prayer) so they can get to know you and be in a right relationship with you, with humanity, and with creation.

Your words in the Bible says, those who seek You will find You. And, taste and see that the Lord is good. The Bible is axiomatic as it starts the creation story for all humanity: “In the beginning, God..” There’s no absolute proof of the existence or non-existence of God; there is a spiritual experience to be had by those who believe by faith as You have opened my eyes to have that belief and that faith.

I think You have so much to show the world about Yourself through the actions of people that believe in You, in a good way. I’m sorry to see the people that have misused Your good book, the Bible, to repulse people against You.

I need your help to stay on track with these prayer blog posts. I find myself shifting back and forth between traditional prayer language and the personal prayer language. I want to use plain simple everyday language without the Christian jargon that doesn’t make sense, even to me sometimes.

I simply express my fears, hopes, desires, and wants, directing them to You, and believing that this is the big invitation you’re making to me and to others. And that’s the good thing I want to experience more of and I want others to experience too.

Thank You for hearing me out.