My Personal Prayer

I make an effort to talk to God every day, but there are days when the words to speak fail me. My mouth opens but it’s just blabber coming out. It’s like having a conversation with a 3-year-old; you sit there listening to them go on and on about nothing and most of the words they are using aren’t even actual words. Sometimes they use their arms for emphasis as if to make it seem like they’re really trying to paint a picture of what they’re saying, but it’s nothing. Literally nothing.

On days like that I write my prayers. It’s amazing how honest I can be on pen and paper. I’d even dare to say that the person I am in my journal is a far different version of me than the person most people would say I am in real life. My journal IS my real life though. Everything else is just my way of imitating a normal human being. I wrote a prayer in January of this year and I want to share it with you. I titled it, (As if it really needed a title) “My Relationship with God.”

I see God today as a higher power. A spirit that is meant to watch over me and help me defeat the demons that often assail me. There are times when I see God as a loving Father, there to lift me up in his arms and wrap me tight when I begin to fail emotionally under the turmoil of everyday life. There are also times when, as my Father, he sorely corrects me for my foolish behavior. God corrects those he loves, so this is fine with me.

What I’ve found to be lacking is a constant awareness of Christ in my inner being. Being mindful of my thoughts, words, and actions because, figuratively speaking, I walk around all day, everyday with an “I Love Jesus” t-shirt on. WWJD is practically tattooed on my forehead, but when wrong thinking or impure motives or intentions arise in me, instead of feeling Christ I feel guilt. “You’re not that person, Rajjae,” I tell myself…and I’m not, but it happens so often and I feel unable or even unwilling to ward it off when it comes.

I recall a series on BVOV about being “God-inside minded.” The details of this message have become blurry, but the title alone is what drew me in. This is what I want. It’s how I desperately need to live my life…God-inside minded. He gave a detailed message on how important it is to live with an awareness of the Holy Spirit and, even as a Christian, this is one of those things that, if not taught, we wouldn’t take the time to think of on our own.

Our daily lives don’t inspire us to rely on Holy Spirit. We don’t see the need for God’s provision for lunch at work or a conversation with a random stranger, yet we serve a God who is deeply invested in things such as these. There are no unimportant events in your life in God’s eyes. You are his child and, unlike earthly parents, He sees and knows far more about us than we know about ourselves. He sees beyond the near future into the entirety of our lives and unless we invite him into the daily happenings- the lunch at work and the conversation with the random stranger- he may begin to feel, to you, like no more than a bystander. Watching quietly, waiting for you to speak to him.

What about you?

Do you find that it’s easy to go about your day with a constant awareness that the spirit of God lives in you?