The Secret of Prayers

When was the last time you had the real heart to heart talk with God? I could imagine you will answer, “Today, when I asked Him to give me blessings.” or “Last night, to keep from me bad things.” Most often than not, our prayers start when we ask the Lord to give all the things we wanted to have. All our desires, we will outpour our cries to the Guy above who’s like Santa Clause for us. Giving all the things we aspire.

Last December 2013, in our parish Church the Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Cubao, PH, our parish priest Fr. Jojo Simon, shared the most inspiring homily during Christmas season. The topic was “Love is a two-way communication”. He elaborated the Gospel, about how the Almighty Father sent his only Son for us; to redeem us from our sins. God fulfilled His promise, yet we were too proud and unfocused, because of the different teachings of Pharisees and to gain earthly possessions. And we choose not to take the chance to know our Savior. We had been selfish in order to achieve the material things and the titles we thought we need.

For Christmas, we were so busy decorating our homes with beautiful bright lights nevertheless, we live our hearts empty. We were serving sumptuous food though we had forgotten to give thanks and honor Jesus Christ during his day. And we forgot to share our blessing to others.
Going back, I would like to share the hidden message of Fr. Jojo, that when we pray, we are not instructing God for instant reply, we lay our hearts to Him and let Him give us the things that we really need. We listen to Him. We let him know our wishes, and we need to response on His call, on His will in our lives.

Prayer time is also a moment of sincere adoration and devotion. This is the time that we prepared ourselves to be naked in God’s eyes. Before we ask Him on little or big things, He had answered it already with what was good for us. All we have to do is to be faithful in asking Him, and wait on His time to unfold his daily blessings and miracles; and when we pray, let’s share the goodness of our commitment by being instrument of Hope and peace of the Lord to our brethren.

The next time we decide to have our genuine conversation with our Lord, we humble ourselves, we pray for our soul, of others, and we give time for God to answer. We need to be patient on waiting for His answers, like the song, “In His time”. Let’s be patient and grateful everyday.

"The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance". 2 Peter 3:9

With this article, I pray for the all the victims of Ebola virus and the sick people around the world. May God speed your healing.