comments:
Not a theologian, but for me, prayer is more of a conversation with God. As another recent revert, I pray Morning and Evening prayer from my BCP (I’m currently visiting an Episcopal Church), which goes over the psalms, an Old Testament reading, New Testament Reading, and a Gospel Reading every day in a sequential manner. It also has a lot of pre-written prayers. While it can sometimes feel hard to do, it’s nice to have language to speak to God with, and it helps to structure my own personal prayers. Usually during my independent prayers at the end of the office (or any other prayer times, I talk about whatever comes to mind, or if there’s something, I ask for it. If something stands out from the readings, I also talk about my impressions from it too. I usually ask for God to help me imitate Christ’s example by granting me grace through the power of the Holy Spirit. That includes praying for my enemies. As for other petitions, idk how God answers prayer. I think sometimes He does, and sometimes He doesn’t. How or why? Idk. I do think answered prayers are factored into the causation of things though as secondary causes, because God wants to partner with humans. But I’m wary of confirmation bias. I don’t think God saves parking spots though, and we shouldn’t treat God like a vending machine. There’s a million ways to pray though, everyone’s different. There’s the Examen, Lectio Divina, Nature prayer, centering prayer, etc. But at the core, it’s all about fostering the relationship with God in all that He is: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. A resource I recommend is Father James Martin’s book Learning to Pray, it really helped me when I started exploring prayer again years ago.