As a child, I memorized The Lord's Prayer, I prayed before every meal, and (fell asleep while I) prayed every night. But for me, this was just saying words out loud and assuming God would hear them and act on them. Again, it was not until the middle of my high school career that I realized, I have to pray from within. I have to mean what I say and say what I mean. My pastor Randy Singer once said, "God does exactly what you expect Him to. So how much do you really expect Him to be able to do in your life?" This hit me hard; I came to understand that prayer came from within me, from my soul rather than my mouth.
Shortly after hearing my pastor say this and while reading The Phenomenology of Prayer, I came across a quote that really put to words what I was feeling, "In any event, even as [prayer] reaches out to poetry, deeds, or intellect, prayer seems firmly centered in the heart, in those passions that infuse the center of the person, the center of the soul" (Mooney 51). This helped me understand what I was (and still am) in the process of learning.
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