Ha, I said in my last post about this that I'd be back in 3 weeks...it's been a little longer than that, but to be fair to myself, I've had a lot going on. For instance, the third week of the challenge, my week got totally taken over by the fact that I was interviewing and orientating and starting work at Wal-Mart. I'm not one of those people who can just adjust my schedule with no problem when something big like that changes, so even though I'm surviving the new schedule, my productivity in other areas kind of fell off. I need to start actually scheduling my time from now on, instead of just going with the flow. XD
Anyway, I haven't been spectacular about praying every single morning, mostly because I seem to be exhausted and forget a lot because I wake up at the last minute so I can go to work...I do remember sometimes, but I think I need to clean my room faster and put a prayer rock somewhere I will step on it so I will be reminded on those mornings I would normally just forget. XD Once it becomes habit maybe I won't need a reminder, but for now that's probably helpful. And putting it into my schedule's a good idea, too. ^.^
So, what I've gained from this.... One thing that I love is that prayer helps me focus my thoughts in the right directions. Half the time I don't really even know what I'm thinking until I can say it out loud or someone else says it for me. When I pray, I can think about the things that are important to me and examine them more readily as I bring them before the Lord.
I don't have the strongest testimony of prayer ever yet, which is something I'm working on because prayer is a very important tool in our relationships with God. The reason I've always struggled with prayer is that I have a tough time determining if I'm feeling the Holy Ghost or if my mind is making things up. Not all the time, but just in general. When I have a big decision to make and my mom tells me to pray about it, I always feel bummed out because I'm so terrified of my own desires being too strong for me to know what the Lord wants for me. It frustrates me to no end, but I keep praying because sometimes I definitely do feel the Spirit and I definitely do know that the Lord hears and is answering my prayer. I know that it's a problem I have, rather than a problem with prayer itself.
On a more upbeat note, the more often I pray, the more I learn to recognize the influence of the Holy Ghost when I'm praying. I have faith that I'll continue to grow in this area as I keep praying and taking things to the Lord every day.
Anyway, from my Personal Progress journal:
I think we don't have to have real faith to kneel down and rattle off a few generic sayings every night before we go to bed, but we do have to have faith to really pray. And in return, praying with faith strengthens our faith.
Having faith that the Lord is listening to our prayers and that He cares what we have to say is necessary; if we don't have a bit of faith at all then we wouldn't even bother pretending to pray. The whole idea is that we want to converse with our Father in Heaven, because that's how relationships are strengthened. By communicating with someone, by sharing things with them.
And in turn, as we trust more and more to the Lord, we will see more and more His hand in our lives, and recognize all that He does for us, which helps to strengthen our faith and testimonies.
