When praying to God, be specific with your petitions

It is difficult enough to learn how to pray to God, but let's start by being specific in your petitions, also called requests.

Prayers come from expressions of gratitude to urgent requests for help, may it be financial, to find a job, an illness, or a life or death situation. I have prayed for all the items that I mentioned. To my amazing surprise I got answers to just about everything. I mean, everything that was important, that is!

What I have found in all of my years of praying is that begging God to give you what you want will simply not work. What does work for me is to lay my request at his doorstep and wait for answers. How many times have you and I been reminded that faith answers all prayers?

"According to your faith be it unto you." The blind have received sight; the sick have recovered; the lonely have been succored; the desperate have been helped, etc. I can go on with many instances in my life where I could have lost my life in situations totally out of my control. And yet I did something to correct a bad situation, or someone in the form of a human being came to my rescue. I never felt that I was alone while I was in distress and in need of help.

I truly believe that if we keep our minds on God on a regular basis, life somehow gets easier for all of us. One recent example was the earthquake in Haiti of January 12, 2010. I was supposed to go to Haiti and take care of business for a friend of mine. We talked about it for an entire week just before the earthquake. I could have easily encouraged my friend, who owns a cargo ship and has it docked 30 miles west of Port-au-Prince, to buy an air ticket for me.

I was in Haiti last December, and I knew that unless you rent a car and drive yourself, the local transportation was not adequate. We kept talking for almost a week as to how I was to get to the port city of Miragoane. He was going to ask a friend of his that lives in Haiti to take me.

The following week the earthquake hit, and I could have been history today.

To say prayers of happiness, joy, gratitude, blessedness, health for my family and friends, and for protection is my daily mission. You may call it a chore, but I prefer to thank God for all that he does for me and my family, than to keep asking him for everything.

God knows what we need before we even ask him. Let him do his job!

If you should have someone in your family who is ill and needs a prayer or holy water, please ask and I will send you a small vial with it. It is my pleasure to do so, and it is my courtesy.


Tony McCleary
tonymcclr@gmail.com
http://www.prayer-be-strong.blogspot.com/