My Fear of Prayer

"So, who would like to pray?"

As much as I hate to admit it, I hated this question. It made me afraid. "I don't want to get picked. I don't want to pray. What will they think of me if I stutter or misspeak? What if my prayer doesn't sound as spiritual as other people's prayers?" That's basically what runs through my mind when I hear those words. And that needs to change.

I hate that I am afraid of prayer. I wish I could be like the people who volunteer to pray all the time. I want to have that kind of relationship with Jesus, that all I care about is Him. I need to stop focusing on what's going on around me and focus on Him.

Because prayer is not about the people around you. It's about God. It's about talking with Him and getting to know Him. I shouldn't be afraid of speaking to Him. I'm not afraid of talking to my friends... Why should He be different? I need to let go of my fear and stop worrying about what other people think of me. I don't care about that. What I care about is my relationship with God and how I can know Him better and be more like Him.

Lately, I have been working on being more consistent in my personal devotions and prayer time. I have gotten so much better and I love it. I have been doing it every day very consistently for a while now, and I don't want that to change. I'm learning so much, and there is so much more I can learn. 

What is helping me most in prayer is praying out loud when I'm by my self. A lot of the reason that I am so afraid of praying is that I don't do it enough. And when I did, I didn't know what to say. I still can't do it like others, but I'm not worried about that. I don't want to be copying the way others pray, that's not real. I want to do it in my own way. I want my faith to be my own. And I want it to be strong, so that I'm not worried about what others think, but only on how great He is.