Pray, don't Prey.

You hear it all of the time," I will pray for you", "you are in my prayers", "praying for you in this difficult time." oh, and my favorite, "sending prayers". I am not saying that these people will never pray for you, or whatever the situation is that needs prayer. What I am saying is, what is prayer? Ok, I realize I am opening up a huge can of worms here, and this is NOT a religion debate. This is about a girl who is tired (and guilty at times) of PREYING, not PRAYING.

It is very easy to ask for things in prayer. Dear God, please let me get this new job. Dear God, if you will just answer this one prayer, I will.....Or, Dear God, please don't let this happen, or that happen. So, when the one thing that you asked God to do for you, does not get done, who do you blame? God.
That is where Pray turns to Prey. We seek out the things we want, or don't want, and ask God to handle things for us. We PREY upon God. We PREY upon others, we PREY upon things. Then we walk around not sure if God even exists because the man never answers our prayers. Well, have you ever thought that maybe it isn't all about you, and that maybe those prayers were answered? Just not the way you wanted. I am so guilty of this, in the past. I have prayed for things, events, and circumstances to go my way, and when they didn't, I would get frustrated. I never realized that the unanswered prayer was because something else was waiting for me, God knew what he was doing, and I was running around grabbing him by the neck demanding he make things better!! UGH!

WE PREY a lot. It is exhausting. We wish bad things for people, because it isn't fair that bad people get away with bad things. And good people had to suffer. I thought I was praying wrong. Or God hated me. Never ever have I questioned my belief in God. He is real. I see that everyday when I look at my children. I just thought that maybe I had made so many mistakes that I was in a "spiritual time out" and he had shut me off. Oh I was so wrong.

So I changed how I approached prayer. Instead of asking God to do or help, I started asking him to do what will be done. "thy will be done" I took the me out of prayer, and gave it to God to handle. I let go of control, that is right I am so controlling that I tried to control God! I simply said" I pray that your will be done, and you comfort the hurt" I also started being thankful to God. Just simply thanking him for anything from the sun shining to hearing of a friend who won the battle from cancer.

All of the sudden, praying was better. It felt like I was being heard. I guess a good way to explain it is that I lowered my expectations, I started to listen to the whispers from God. And in doing that, I started to change the way I lived my life.

That being said, sometimes in life, we encounter difficult people. People that no matter what, cause you to want to give yourself a root canal then have to deal with them. I call these people lesson planners. They are sent here to help us learn a lesson, that for some reason God thinks we need to learn. They may grate our every last nerve, and make us wish we could karate chop their head, but if we will take a step back and look at them as a lesson, then we will begin to do God's work. Just look at them and say" there is a lesson , and even a gift here in this situation, and I need to find out what it is." If we handle difficult people in this manner, we will always come out ahead, and better for it. I am not saying we will get what we want from it, but it means that what we thought was good for us, doesn't serve us any longer. God knows what he is doing, he has been around for a minute or two.

I had convinced myself that in the past two months, God has decided that I have a lot of lessons to learn, because he sent A LOT of people, events, and feelings my way that I had to fight off like I was SheRa Princess of Power. But, I did not ask him for what I wanted, I asked him to do what needed to be done. And as always, he did. And I am fine. I lived another day, as my best friend says. And living is pretty fun. You just have to learn how to do it right. If you want to know how, then PRAY, don't PREY.

I want to leave you tonight with a few quotes from some great inspirational people:

“An authentic life is the most personal form of worship. Everyday life has become my prayer.”

Sarah Ban Breathnach   “Grace is available for each of us every day - our spiritual daily bread - but we've got to remember to ask for it with a grateful heart and not worry about whether there will be enough for tomorrow.”  Sarah Ban Breathnach   Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” ----from A Return to Love, by Marianne Williamson   Thanks for reading! Amber