Prayer is a conversation

In our culture today, if someone has said that God has spoken to them, even people who believe in God might question the truth behind that statement. However, it doesn't really make sense to question that; we can see clearly in the Bible that God speaks to those who follow Him, and if God is the same as He always was - including during Biblical times - then surely He must speak to those who follow Him now.

The reason behind our scepticism seems to stem from the belief that if someone is talking to us, they must be using words. However, God can speak to us through any number of ways, not just words. But even then, we never seem to expect God to speak to us during prayer. We think that we pray and then God puts us on hold sorting out all the other prayers before He gets to us. For that reason, when we pray, we talk and talk and talk and don't leave room for God's response before we finish and move on to other things. If we're talking to another person, we don't carry on and on and don't let them get a word in, so why do we do it with God?

If we pray slowly and leave gaps, we might find that God does want to speak to us, but maybe not in words.

Though, there are times when we don't really know how to pray. We find that we've finished a prayer and forgotten to pray about something or the other, and if we don't mention something in the conversation, we're not going to get a reply.

A good prayer technique is JOY. It stands for 'Jesus, Others, Yourself'. First you give thanks for all that God has been doing since you last prayed, then you pray for others, and finally you pray for yourself. We can make sure that we don't forget to mention anything, and then stay silent and listen for what God has to say.