If You Only Pray When You're in Trouble, You're in Trouble
"If you only pray when you're in trouble, you're in trouble."
~Anonymous
I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume you don't pray every day. I mean, good job if you do, but you're in the minority. The bulk of prayerful folks, people who know how to pray and why they should be doing it, still don;t choose to pray every day. Even though we know that it is the thing that is most likely to make us feel better and to shift our circumstances, we still have a tendency to try everything in the physical world before resorting to prayer. Why? Why do we insist on mucking about in the material realm when we know real change happens through spiritual cause? The most common reason I hear is that people don't feel their needs are big enough for God to bother with them. In other words, we don't think our lives matter to God.
Whoa. Breathe that in for a minute. We're all pretty quick to pray when a major diagnosis or disaster is on the line -- there's no question that Spirit is up to handle those -- but we doubt that God cares about our regular lives? Or that we're wasting God's time with small issues? No, no, no, no, no! And again, NO!
The Divine doesn't know about size. Big, little, dramatic, simple, none of that means anything to God. We impress our expectations into the Law and what we have claimed shows up. That's all. Spirit is just as happy to cure a wart as it is to cure cancer. The question is not the size of what we choose, it's that we're actively choosing.
Regular, every day prayer is practice. We are elite prayer athletes. If we want to be ready for the Olympics, we'd better be training all along. When big challenges come, they can threaten to pull us off our center. Daily prayer ensures that we have the spiritual muscle in those moments to gather ourselves enough to step into prayer.
You are worth it. There is nothing you want in life (big, little or in between) that God does not want you to have. And you are worth having it. It is the Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom, as it says in that fancy old book. But you have to accept the keys to the kingdom! Prayer is our acceptance, our big YES! to the universe.
My invitation is this: Pray first, before trying the worldly solutions. Pray every day, whether you think you need it or not. Find something to pray about every day, regardless of perceived size or importance. To God, everything about you is important. To God, everything about you is worthy. I think you'll find that life gets easier and challenges dissolve before your very eyes as you let your prayer life lead the way.
