Changing Our Hearts Through Prayer

Yesterday, I realized that I have been looking at prayer in quite an erroneous way and that’s why when it comes to petition, I have been so skeptical these past years.  All this time I thought that when I prayed for something that I want and think that I truly need I was doing so to change God’s mind, to get Him to submit to doing what I wanted of Him.  Yet, God is perfect He doesn’t change.  In yesterday’s readings we are encouraged to pray, to ask and to hope knowing that God will provide.  It’s easy to take these scripture readings as asking God to change His will for our lives and becoming disillusioned when things do not change the way we hoped.  However, prayer is about changing our hearts, about making us closer reflections of Christ.  For the longest time, I have prayed only to be disillusioned and disappointed when those prayers didn't turn as I hoped. Now I know that when I pray and ask God for something, even if the answer is no the prayer process works to change my heart to mold me into a better reflection of Christ. 

Father shared how he went to a healing mass and though he witnessed several miraculous healings, he returned home still sick, “sometimes people say that if your faith is strong enough you will receive what you desire in prayer, but that’s not the case.  God is mysterious and though he heals some – at other times He permits suffering because it glorifies Him.”  Thus, when I ask in prayer, I shouldn’t feel like the the strength of my faith will produce the outcome that I want nor that I can change God through my constant petitions.  I need to look at prayer as putting my needs before the Lord and trusting that He will provide whether He says “yes,” “no” or “not yet” - because prayer doesn't change God, it doesn't change things or circumstances it changes us and that change changes our world.  Real prayer is about changing ourselves first and foremost and this personal change affects our world positively. 

I constantly whisper, “God, help my unbelief,” because I thought that receiving the results that I wanted was a matter of how strong my faith is.  This way of thinking many times led me to feel like a failure because if I didn’t get the yes, I wanted in prayer I thought it was because my faith was not strong enough.  When my brother died, a Christian woman came up to me and said, “If you would have prayed harder, he wouldn’t have died.”  That was my first introduction to prayer- results in prayer depended on the strength of my faith.  Yet, the object of prayer is to bring us closer to God to remind us that we need Him more than He does us and sometimes though things we want go unchanging – prayer will change our hearts and we will see that whatever is being permitted in our lives serves a greater purpose.  A purpose that will bring us closer to heaven, one that doesn't convince God to give us what we want, but to align us with His will (WOW).