Is there any other kind? Well, yes, but this month of the Year of Prayer, I’ll be taking a look at petitioning prayer. For those of you tuning in, every Sunday throughout 2007 there will be a post on Balanced Life Center exploring prayer and religion. In January we talked about the basics of prayer and did an introduction. During February the focus was on primal religions, also known as tribal traditions. In March, the focus will be petitioning prayer.
I started off last week with a post on prayer in a slightly different form: making a request, then leaving it in the God can. It’s my idea of petitioning prayer. If I feel that something is beyond my realm of belief, I ask for a bit of help. Generally, I think that prayer is a matter of changing my mind and aligning myself with Spirit.
Petitioning prayer, on the other hand, is pray that asks a deity (God) for something. It presumes that God is outside of ourselves. A good example is the Serenity Prayer:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
If you were praying for a job, you might say:
God, steer me in the direction of the perfect job for me.
It’s really a matter of semantics and personal preference. Since God is everywhere, he is equally available outside of you, inside of you, all around you, and as you. The pitfall of petitioning prayer is that it takes the responsibility outside of yourself and places it elsewhere. Sometimes, that’s what we need. It’s why I have the God can. In those instances where I feel that something is completely beyond me, I access God outside of me. At those points I feel like someone outside of myself has to intervene.
Petitioning prayer is a wonderful tool to have in your spiritual tool belt. It helps you to surrender your worries or concerns to a Higher Power, especially in times when you feel like you’re swimming in it.
In Spirit,
Nneka
