Prayer Ap

I have a confession to make.  I have never been the prayer warrior that I should be or want to be; at least with what I would call "formal" prayer.  I do find myself praying as I go about my life.  I talk to God in the shower, while I am working, as I am in my hobby of storm chasing and heading into a possibly tornadic storm, lol.  I do seem to be lacking in time at home on my knees though.  I always feel like I should be doing that more.

It's not like I haven't tried.  Quite a number of times I have fallen asleep.  Sometimes  I get distracted in thought and kind of drift away from praying.  Quite often I just don't think about doing so.  It has never been an ingrained habit to do formal prayers and have a prayer time.

In my quest to improve in this area, an idea struck me.  What if I downloaded an ap for my phone where I could keep a list of what to pray for, and whether that prayer was answered.  One that would also give me a reminder when it was time to pray.  Surely there has to be one of those.

I went to the ap store and tried several combinations of searches.  I never found exactly what I was looking for.  I did find one free prayer journal but no time reminder on it.  That will be sufficient for now I think. 

What surprised me was how many prayer aps there were, and what the content of them was.  The Muslims seem very devout in their prayers.  There were lots of aps for their prayer times and what to pray.  The Catholics too seem to be very devout in their prayers and have specific prayers to repeat for almost every situation.  They are not all to Jesus, but they have lots of repeatable prayers.  Protestants are not to be outdone when it comes to this.  There too were many aps with repeatable prayers.  And the smattering of other groups had their prayer aps as well.  Come to think of it, I did not see one for Jewish prayer. 

This all struck me as very odd.  It felt to me like all of this was like speaking a magic spell to get what you wanted rather than a deep conversation with your loving creator.  I suppose the "now I lay me down to sleep" memorized prayers are good for little children to remember, but when you grow up, I think you should be able to formulate your own thoughts and words when expressing yourself to your creator. 

Mathew 6:7-8  But when you pray, don't use vain repetitions as the heathen do: for they think that they will be heard for their much speaking.  Therefore, don't be like them: for your Father knows what things you need before you ask Him.

Going by what Jesus says here, all those formulaic prayers so many repeat over and over don't get past the ceiling.  Even the prayer that Jesus recites in the following verses has become a vain repetition.  The "Our Father who art in heaven" prayer is not one that will be heard just because you say it over and over.    Jesus in verse 9 explains that we are to pray "after this manner".  The Lords prayer is an outline, not a formula.  I'll save that exposition for another day though.

I guess the point I am getting at is this, prayer is having two way communication with Yahweh.  We speak, He listens.  He speaks, we listen.  Prayer is a way to find out what God wants for us.  Prayer is done so that we can find out how we are supposed to be aligned with what God wants, not for God to answer to what we want.

Jehovah is not some magic genie that is on out beck and call.  We are to be submitted to Him and bend our ways and our thoughts to match His.

I Thessalonians 5:17  Pray without ceasing. 

Formal prayers are great, and I would like to do so more, but we should always be in prayer mode, communicating with Adonai; not with repetitious softly spoken magic spells, but with our heartfelt needs, desires, wishes, concerns, etc..  And we should be ready to really listen for a reply.  Communication is a two way street.