Do you ever feel like your prayers are just a long list of requests? While asking God for help is important, a healthy prayer life is about more than just petitions. In this Jolt of Faith, we break down the 5 types of prayer that can strengthen your connection with God:
Petition – Asking for help (yes, that’s okay!)
Gratitude – Recognizing God’s blessings Adoration – Praising God for who He is
Intercession – Praying for others in need
Meditation – Reflecting on scripture or God’s attributes
By incorporating all five, you create a deeper, more fulfilling prayer life that strengthens your faith. Watch now and discover how to bring more balance to your prayers!
Jolt of Faith – Full Text
Jolt of Faith 2/20 – Are You Only Asking God For Things? How To Build a Balanced Prayer Life
Another challenge we may have in prayer that we think when we look at our prayer life, all it is is asking. What we call petition. Asking God to fix this problem, asking God to help me with this problem, asking God to heal this person who is sick. And a lot of times people say, I feel like all I ever do when I pray is ask God for things.That’s not a bad thing. God wants us to go to Him with everything. Not just the 911 calls. In the Gospel, Jesus remind us reminds us, God is our Father.And he wants us to go with Him with every problem, every worry, every concern, not just the big things.Now we also need to have a balanced prayer life.God’s not a magic lamp that I rub to have the genie grant my wishes.And we all need to have that balance in our lives.
Did you know there are different types of prayer? Petition is the one we’re all probably good at asking God to help me, but there’s also gratitude, which needs to be an important part of my prayer life, recognizing God has helped me. There’s also adoration where I just simply thank God for who God is, for His awesomeness, His love for me, His mercy, whatever it is. There’s petition, where I pray for the needs of someone else.Not just my problems and my family’s problems, but this is praying for peace in another part of the world, praying for people I’ve never known, praying for people in prison in institutions.And finally, the last one is meditation.Simply thinking of an attribute of God or a piece of scripture where God has spoken and meditating on that and allowing that to be our prayer. A good balance of all of those makes for a healthy prayer life.
Obviously, some are gonna speak to us more than others.Some are gonna be more comforting than others, but we should look to have a little bit of all five of those types of prayer present in our prayer life to make sure that our relationship with God remains that wholesome life giving relationship that it needs to be.Not a sermon, not a homily, but just that little Jolt of Faith we all may need.