The Town of Odyssey

Today I was reminded how helpful and at times completely freeing to just tell God how you feel. Even just a small weight lifted in tough times can help. I never have really set a specific area as my prayer closet. For me, I pray in lots of rooms in my apartment. However, the bathroom does tend to have less distractions

If you feel comfortable saying, what is your prayer closet? Do you have any uplifting stories? Any other thoughts about prayer?

Bren wrote:Today I was reminded how helpful and at times completely freeing to just tell God how you feel. Even just a small weight lifted in tough times can help.

Isn't that such a wonderful feeling?

This may sound strange, but I think the closest thing I've had to a prayer closet was the quiet car on the train when that used to be my standard method of commuting to and from work. My commute home in particular was just a nice, quiet time with very few distractions, where I could spend some quality time with God.

I'm a little bit like Penny Wise-Bassett in that prayer had always been a very personal and private thing for me. I always feel a little bit uncomfortable with public prayer, which is weird considering I grew up with it being a large part of the Christian circles I orbited. I guess what bothers me the most about it is the almost performance-like aura I've seen it take on in many instances. Now, I know that's not true universally, and corporate prayer was a HUGE source of power for the early church. But I feel like over the years, we've become a lot less real in our prayers. For most of my life, I felt that I had to always come to God with the scrubbed-clean version of myself. I saw it almost like going to talk to an important adult, like a pastor or the school principal, where you had to look good and say all the right things in order to improve your chances of being heard. But if you look at the Psalms, they are full of prayers that are angry. sad. broken. REAL. And that's been really encouraging to me lately. God calls us to come as we are--broken and imperfect--so that HE can fix our brokenness for His glory.

All that to say...I'm curious to know what you guys think. How do you feel about corporate prayer? Do you pray differently by yourself than you do with others? And is doing so valid, or should our prayers be virtually the same, whether praying publicly or in private?

Also, huge apologies to Bren for hijacking his topic.

ByeByeBrownie wrote:I'm a little bit like Penny Wise-Bassett in that prayer had always been a very personal and private thing for me. I always feel a little bit uncomfortable with public prayer, which is weird considering I grew up with it being a large part of the Christian circles I orbited. I guess what bothers me the most about it is the almost performance-like aura I've seen it take on in many instances. Now, I know that's not true universally, and corporate prayer was a HUGE source of power for the early church. But I feel like over the years, we've become a lot less real in our prayers. For most of my life, I felt that I had to always come to God with the scrubbed-clean version of myself. I saw it almost like going to talk to an important adult, like a pastor or the school principal, where you had to look good and say all the right things in order to improve your chances of being heard. But if you look at the Psalms, they are full of prayers that are angry. sad. broken. REAL. And that's been really encouraging to me lately. God calls us to come as we are--broken and imperfect--so that HE can fix our brokenness for His glory.

I feel the exact same! I find it awkward praying publicly.. So I don't do it (I want to get better about it though). and I also felt like in some cases there was just this production like feeling when others prayed publicly, and it just didn't feel very sincere.

I'm also guilty of feeling like I need to be in a good standing before I can pray. I still struggle with that. I guess it is in part with me not forgiving myself and/or not allowing God to forgive me.

I love praying before I fall asleep. I feel like Jesus just holds me in those times. He takes away the worries from the day and gives me peace.