Prayer

Prayer is simply having a conversation with God. Usually, it is what we’d see as “one sided”. You are talking to Him. However, it is also trying to listen to what He has to say. A great way to do this is to listen to what other people speak into your life, read the Bible or simply sit quietly and ask God to “speak” to you. No, he doesn’t usually speak in an audible voice, but his Spirit talks to ours in many different ways.

That being said, how do you talk with God? Good question. The key is to keep it simple and natural. In other words, how do you talk to anyone? Yeah, it is a bit different, I know. You can’t see Him, and as we said earlier, He doesn’t usually talk back in the conventional way…

But here’s the weird thing. Once you start talking to God, eventually it will feel like the most deep and real conversations you’ve ever had. You can tell him anything. And He’s never distracted by the TV, or a pretty girl or a plate load of spaghetti. He is always listening.

At North Hills, we want to help you on your journey into prayer. One way to help you is to make sure you have some good tools. One thing that might help you is to realize that we are all shaped differently.

Some of us engage God best in worship or when there is music. Some of us engage God more effectively when we are out in His creation, the natural surroundings. Some of us engage God most effectively through contemplation; some of us through intellectual study, or His word; some of us through serving. Finding these things out about yourself will help you to learn your style, your best language. A great book to help you would be Sacred Pathways by Gary Thomas. Click on the title to see how you can purchase it.

We also help each other as well as support the Kingdom by taking time to gather together in prayer. You can form your own prayer group or you might consider some of the places we have created for groups to pray. One of those groups is in the prayer room on Sunday mornings at 9:30, before the actual worship service. Interested? Come and join us!

We also create time within the worship services themselves to help people pray. We practice communion every Sunday so you have a few moments to reflect, pray and connect with God. It is one time during our busy week where all activity stops. We simply commune with God as we take the bread and the juice, and remember who He is, what he has done for us, and where he is trying to take us.