Doris Wellington

Prayer 101 Doris Wellington

Prayer is a universal religious ritual and is offered in every language around the world to one deity or another. Simply put, prayer is talking to God or gods. And depending on the maharishi you're listening to; prayer is also God talking back. I've come to understand that without this faith principle I could not in any way succeed at Christianity. For me there has to be the inept belief that if I believe God exists; he cannot be less qualified to speak or listen than I am. He must not only be infinitely qualified to be God; he must be infinitely wiser and sensitive toward those of us who not only believe that God hears our prayers, but that he answers them. And of all the reasons we give for praying, the need for human interaction with something or someone greater than mere mortals ranks number one for me. Prayer 101 lists a litany of reasons we as humans lift up our faith to God in prayer; and particularly Christians believers. My belief is embodied in the narratives of the Gospel writers and their recorded relationship with Christ, which unfolds how he prayed, what he prayed for, who he prayed to and under what circumstances he prayed. In this experience of shadowing the relationship between Christ and his disciples, I also see what Christ taught about prayer and its power to transform lives, even situations sometimes deemed impossible through our eyes. It is in this context of faith and its relationship to prayer that I offer Prayer 101 in the hope that the life of someone reading these few pages will be transformed into a volume of evidentiary encounters with the God who hears and answers prayer.