Archived_Member16
SPNer
Faith and Prayer
Faith and Prayer are two of the main ingredients in any form of spirituality. Mastery of these two points is essential, for true spiritual growth. I will start with faith because in order for prayer to be effective, a good solid understanding of faith is needed.
Faith is something that we are taught from the very beginning of our lives. But in a God-fearing society, many of us are taught to fear God rather then have faith in him and/or her. Faith comes from the spirit first, and then the mind. With this being said, the mind has to be trained to follow through with what the spirit is saying. First of all, faith is not doubt. Doubt is exactly the opposite of faith. For some strange reason, most of us never learn this. Placing your faith in God means exactly that. Placing all of your doubts and fears up to God for him and/or her to sort out. Faith is knowing that there is a God and/or Goddess that has more knowledge and understanding then you. And that he or she will see that life is carried out the way it has been planned. Having faith does not mean giving up your responsibility for your actions. It certainly does not mean that you will not have to make choices in life. You are able to make choices in this life, and that in itself is a gift from our creator. But having faith means that no matter what choice you make, our eternal Mother and/or Father will always be there for you, and will always love you just the same. The choices we make may lead us down a longer path if we choose, but it never means losing the love of our creator.
Whenever I talk to someone about faith, I always give this example. Suppose you have gone to the store with your children. As your leaving the store, you notice that your 5 year old son has stolen something from the store. What are you going to do? Well first off you will probably have him return the things he has stolen to the store, and second when he gets home you will probably punish him or do something to show him that he has done wrong. However, are you going to condemn your son? Are you going to punish him for the rest of his life? Probably not. So with this in mind, why on earth would our Creator punish us for eternity if we make mistakes? Our Creator sees us as children, children that need to learn. Just the same as you would love and care for your child, God loves and cares for us. I'm not trying to imply that there are no repercussions for our actions, this is what we call Karma. Karma is effectively the way we learn to do the correct action and how we grow away from impure thoughts and actions. Karma combined with reincarnation assures that we learn our lessons, and break free from learned patterns of wrong behavior.
The road to enlightenment is a long and narrow path, with many opportunities to stray off course. By making better choices, we will be able to stay on our path a lot easier. However, if we do stray off, we will be lost until we realize where we went wrong. After we realize what we did wrong, we will have to find our way back, but our Creator will always be there to help get us back on course. The idea here is that no matter what we do, eventually we will move on and we will always have Gods blessing.
Prayer is a way of communicating with our Creator. There are many different kinds of prayer, but they all have the same ingredients... Faith, love, and true intent. For prayer to be effective, your intentions must be genuine. Routine prayer or prayer only when in distress is not as effective as prayer that comes from the heart, and that is of genuine intent. Formal prayer works wonders, however it is not the only type of prayer. Eventually it should become such a strong part of your life, that you will find yourself simply talking outright to God, just the same as you would talk to anyone else. Although this may not seem like prayer, it certainly is and it is of the same value. It is a sign that you have good communication with God.
God will always listen, and answer your prayers. It may not seem like you are getting an answer, but if you listen close enough you will "see" what God is trying to tell you. This is where faith comes in. You must know and believe that our Creator knows what is best. Although we may not see it just yet, it always is. When you pray for answers, pray with faith, and leave it at that. When the time comes, God will lead you in the right direction. Just when you least expect it the answer will be there for you. You may need to be a little more open to receiving it because you never know where the signs will come. You may not understand why things are happening, but you soon you will. You just have to be open and willing to understand, and have faith that the answers are there.
May you be blessed with faith, wisdom, and understanding throughout all you do.
http://www.intuitivetarot.com/faithandprayer.html
