National Day of Prayer

Today is the National Day of Prayer.  Did you know that?  I (Aimee) had completely forgotten until yesterday when I was talking with my pastor and he mentioned it.  I wasn’t able to go to the city event that was held today, so instead, a pulled out a half an hour of free time and I sat under a tree in my backyard and prayed on my own.

It was great!  I just finished reading a book that was about how to have good spiritual conversations with non-believers.  He spent a chapter talking about prayer (aside from spots throughout the book where it was brought up over and over).  He said something that I had never heard, or really thought about before: when we pray, we should pray out loud whenever possible.  God may know our thoughts, but Satan and his minions don’t.  And if we want to send them off “shaking in their boots,” then we should verbalize our prayers so that they can hear them.

Like I said, I never thought about it before, but I decided to take his advice and to try and pray out loud whenever I’m alone.  I’ve been doing that for several evenings now and I did it today in under the tree in my backyard.  I don’t know if my prayers have sent shivers of fear down the backs of any demons (though I pray that God would use me so powerfully), but I can tell you that it has made a difference to me.

Speaking my prayers out loud somehow makes it feel more real, more like a real conversation with God.  I also think that it is helping me to know how to better express myself when I pray out loud with others.  There will still be times, and have been times over the last few days, when I just don’t know quite how to say what I’m thinking.  And that’s ok.  But I’m going to continue this praying out loud and see what happens next.