The best way to get to know someone is through conversation. Remember the telephone game we played at birthday parties as kids? A message started and was passed from person to person until the last person repeated what they’d heard which usually didn’t resemble the original message at all!

That’s not a conversation. Conversations have back and forth, shared information, discussed topics, and sometimes heartfelt disclosures.

This is how prayer works and how we discover God’s will.

In combination with reading our Bibles and having the Holy Spirit in us guiding our thoughts, we talk to God about what’s going through our minds. We ask questions, we process what the Bible says, and we pause to write and/or listen to His responses. He does respond! Not with an audible voice, but through promptings in our souls. Over time we get better at hearing Him and knowing it IS Him, not our own imaginations. But that does take time. And time, with consistency, is how we learn to listen and how we get to know God.

We don’t have to kneel to pray or fold our hands or close our eyes … although we can. Keep in mind that prayer is simply a conversation. It doesn’t have strict rules around it. Yes, we are talking with the Most High God, but He has warmly invited us to come with confidence into His presence (Hebrews 4:16). So just talk with Him, conversationally. He wants you to.

That same verse in Hebrews tells us when we do that, come into His presence in prayer, we WILL be met with love, and find grace to help us with what we need. It doesn’t mean we get the answer with the first ask. It does mean that as we continue showing up and talking with Him, clarity and wisdom will come. Sometimes the answer is in the form of peace, a settled understanding in the soul that we know what God wants us to do – based on His nature and in alignment with what He says in His holy Word. Those two things must always be present in an answer we believe we have received.

If you’re in a season of wondering what to do and wanting to do what God says, prayer is one of the most important ways of pursuing the answer. Check this out, “Call to Me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know” (Jeremiah 33:3, NIV). Who doesn’t want that?!

If you feel a little stuck on what to say, you can always pray God’s words right back to Him. Say the following verses out loud to Him and you will have prayed!

“Show me Your ways, Lord, teach me Your paths. Guide me in Your truths and teach me, for You are God my Savior, and my hope is in You all day long” (Psalm 25:4-5, NIV).