I've always struggled with prayer.

I'm not sure I have anything helpful to offer. I don't pray all the time, but when I do it is usually in ritual (the Jesus prayer, BCP prayers, etc), though there are spontaneous prayers, too.

Ritual brings me some solace, because I can come to it regardless of my personal feelings or beliefs in the moment.

I may have more thoughts to add later.

Ya, I don't fit the normal personal Christian prayer as well. Tho I feel I have a personal relation with the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
but my prayers only on rare occasions were answered. There are two prayers that I do pray a lot. First, I thank God often for the good things that
do happen to me. This I find meaningful because I do feel thankful for almost everything that I'm apart of in this world.
The other had taken me decades to appreciate. Most mornings before I get out of bed I do a meditation that is goalless and is what ever topic
my mind/soul needs to think about. I have come to see that this has kept my soul, my understanding of who I am, etc very current why whole
life. I talk to people that are trying to figure out who they are today and they are doing workshops and counseling plus listening to a lot
of friends to try and figure it all out. But I find I have all the answer I need till something new crops up. This morning meditation I do
has come to be a laying my soul before God and giving Him permission t do anything with those thoughts that needs to be done.

Best I can tell its saved me much heart ache in life. SO not traditional prayers, but yet a lot of time in prayer if one wants to call these
things prayers.

PRAY TO DISCOVER & LET GO OF MISCONCEPTIONS

I learned that emotional pain is caused by unfounded fears, which are misconceptions. My basic fears come from early childhood. Naturally, childhood is when we're most naive and prone to fearful misconceptions. So that's where most of them started. You don't have to remember how they started, just realize what are misconceptions.

In my case it was loneliness. I thought my loneliness simply meant that I needed companionship. But one day I was inspired to think about that more deeply. So I asked myself if there is fear involved in loneliness. Of course, fear of being alone. And is there a misconception involved in that fear? Again, yes, I'm never alone, because God is always with me. Then why do I feel alone? Because I don't want to be close to God, because he will only berate me for all the things I do imperfectly and will always be able to tell me I could have done better, no matter how hard I worked or how well, and I'd never get any compliments for accomplishments.

When I put those thoughts into words, I realized that my concept of God was apparently based on my childhood experience with Dad. Dad is the one who always criticized and never gave compliments and always had an endless list of difficult tasks for me to do.

So that allowed me to realize that God isn't like that. God loves me no matter what and he wants to help me with any problem I have. He wants to be my best friend, not my slave driver. And I realized then that it made sense to ask God for help as often as I could think of it, because his advice is the best possible.

So by seeing and understanding my misconception, I was able to let go of my barrier to God and I have been asking for his help ever since then with almost every little or big problem that I encounter. And I think it has helped a lot.

Another thing I learned from reading someone else's method of prayer, based on "Ask and it shall be given you" etc, is to ask for things by thanking God in advance. That seems to work well too. I used to attend 12 Step meetings and I discussed this at one of them. I joked that in this way God owes me, because I already thanked him. In reality I try to remember to thank him both before and after I get what I ask for. It's not to sway God in any way; rather, it's to improve my attitude and my thinking.

A few years ago I felt that God was telling me it's time for me to get a woman companion to share my life with, though I'm getting older. So I've been praying for a woman companion for quite a while. I did get one last year and our relationship lasted about a year, then she broke us up. She was not a very good companion, but I felt that we could both progress and improve our relationship. But she was less patient. So now I'm impatient for another companion and my prayers aren't answered so far. I'll have to ask God if I have misconceptions on this matter.

FireDragon76 said:

I have a confession to make... as a Christian since my early 30's, I always struggled with prayer. It's purpose, it's usefulness.

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I hope you've made that confession to God, in prayer! Have you asked him to help you through this? Through all of the current struggles in your life? Do not try to hide such things from God, for in reality he knows all and you only end up hiding them from yourself.

Know of my prayers,
Zip

I think of prayer as voicing who I am to one who knows me already. My prayers give voice to the things I already trust in God to do in my trust of him. No point in repetition or silence.

I think prayer also helps with changing our minds & our actions. Ideally, anyway.

I typically avoid confrontation but recently allowed myself to engage with a hostile person. The exchange ended quickly but left me angry - at the other person & myself because my rule is always don't engage. I needed time to pray after, to calm myself & to hopefully act more peacefully next time. I'm still too grumpy to pray for the other person but that will come soon...

FireDragon76 said:

ceased to have any meaning for me.

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I've never experienced a situation or thing without meaning before. Can you tell us more about what it's like?

FireDragon76 said:

I guess I have trouble understanding how the practice of Christian prayer aligns with classical theism. What exactly does petitionary prayer "do" if God already knows the future?

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Christian prayer is most about communing with God and declaring his ultimate will for the world. Or so it seems to me.

Jesus talks about asking God for what he already knows we need. So this has been around as a thing.

Also you might find this interesting:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/petitionary-prayer/

I'm not liberal or progressive but I will say this:

Many Christians, regardless of denomination or if they are conservative or liberal, struggle with prayer.

We're human. It's totally ok if you do.

God understands.

I hope I helped....

God Bless...

My friend, it is my understanding that all Christians struggle with prayer and some point and many struggle with it throughout their lives. My only advice to you is that whether you believe it will help or not, try telling the Lord how you feel. Perhaps using a prayer help like "Shorter Christian Prayer" or a BCP might assist you.

FireDragon76 said:

I guess I have trouble understanding how the practice of Christian prayer aligns with classical theism. What exactly does petitionary prayer "do" if God already knows the future?

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Knowing the future isn't an issue. God also knows whether you are going to pray. C S Lewis once said that prayers are answered from the Beginning.

FireDragon76 said:

I guess I have trouble understanding how the practice of Christian prayer aligns with classical theism. What exactly does petitionary prayer "do" if God already knows the future?

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One way of answering is that even though it is necessarily the case that what God knows will happen does not entail that what God knows will necessarily be the case. A simpler way to say it is that you cannot derive the necessity of the consequent from the necessity of the consequence.

First, let me note that I’m answering from a traditional Christian perspective where God is all-powerful and knows the future in detail. I think there are questions about that, but I don’t have a real alternative to present (nor would CF permit it).

One of the biggest questions is why God would want petitionary prayer in the first place. Prayer aimed at helping us understand him and what we should do is pretty obvious. But why should God be affected by what we ask for? I don’t think Scripture gives a real answer. The best we can do, I think, is to be guided by the general thought of God as Father, and say that while parents will do the best for their children without request, there’s a difference between an impersonal good intention and doing something that your children know comes from you and is part of your love for them.

If we assume that God knows everything in advance, then he also knows what people will be his children and what they will pray for. I assume that what he does takes account of all kinds of things he knows about what will result, but I think it makes sense to believe that he takes special pleasure in responding to the requests of his people.

For someone who knows everything that is going to happen and what is going to be the effect of every action, you might as well assume that he decides what he’s going to do from the beginning. If he knows the future, that assumes he knows his own actions in advance as well. With this kind of God, I think we might as well assume that he decides everything he is going to do from the beginning, but taking into account who is going to pray and in what context. A Calvinist account, of course, would use slightly stronger language.

However I think with the traditional concept of God it actually makes the most sense to think of him as being outside time, so really the question of when he does something may be meaningless. After all, time is part of space-time, which is part of the created universe. While God may project himself into time, it’s hard to believe that he’s limited to it. If that’s true, it’s not so much that he knows what is going to happen in advance as that he sees it all from a viewpoint that is itself outside time. In that case he would make decisions on response to prayer from the same perspective.

FireDragon76 said:

I'm straining to understand what you are saying. It reminds me of Carl Sagan on Cosmos talking about a four-dimensional hypercube.

I guess what you are trying to say is that foreknowledge is not fatalism?

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If by fatalism you mean your decisions don’t matter, I don’t think even strict Calvinism is fatalist, and certainly not just foreknowledge.

God’s plans depend upon knowing what you’ll do, but he doesn’t cause it. He relies on knowing how you’ll act.

I don’t think one should view him as just sitting there calculating how people will act, sort of a watch-maker who starts the world ticking, knowing what it will do. He’s actively involved with his people, and the Reformers would maintain, even to some extent with others, to control the consequences of evil, so that earth remains a decent place, though certainly far from perfect. But the usual Christian assumption is that he does all of this in the context of knowing how all of history is going to work. So he may well have started working on the things that will be needed to grant your prayer before you make it.

But in all of this people make real decisions. He doesn’t force you to do things, but he depends upon you to do what he knows you’re going to do. This is real, responsible choice, for which you’re accountable.

We depend upon people to do things as well. No one thinks that’s fatalism. But we’re sometimes wrong. He isn’t.

Thus far I think this agrees with any traditional Christian view of God as having foreknowledge. If you can't accept it, I think you have to give up the traditional idea that God is omniscient. What Calvinism adds is intent. People still make responsible decisions, but God starts out with a list of people he intends will be saved and not saved, and sets things up to make sure that happens.