Thoughts about prayer

Sometimes you don't know what you're getting yourself into until it's too late. I knew that my life would be chaotic if I didn't obey spiritual guidance, but until I actually lived my life according to my rules, I didn't realize that I was on a downward spiral. I wasn't involved in drugs or theft or anything like that, but I came so close to doing something I never thought I would do in a million years. It's not easy to admit my weaknesses, especially since I'm a perfectionist, haha, but having those weaknesses just means that I'm human. It means that I could do things that are wrong, even if I don't mean to do them. When I live life by God's rules instead of my own, everything is better for me. Some people might think it won't happen to them. They might think that they won't give in to temptation, but if you think that then you're fooling yourself. Since we're imperfect, we all have temptations, but if we're close to God, then it will be easy to resist temptations.

I am on a journey to spiritually transform myself. It's a very long and arduous journey because I'm imperfect, but I feel like God is helping me every step of the way. Not just because he wants to help me, but because I'm Letting him help me. My pastor once said that "if you can count how many times you pray, then you're not praying enough. You need to pray as much as you can every day, even if you feel like you're praying about something insignificant." I thought it would be a little strange to pray for something insignificant. However, then I thought... "Well praying helps me draw closer to our Lord and no prayer could be crazy to the Lord, unless you're praying for the death of someone, or for someone to get hurt." So I've been praying a lot lately, as well as immersing myself in daily bible reading and not only do I feel happier, I also feel closer to God. I knew that I was special to him, but now I honestly feel special. I used to only pray maybe once or twice a day, and it's sad to say that when I was spiritually drowning I didn't pray at all which isn't good because when you don't pray, you won't get closer to God and if you aren't close to him, you leave a way open for sinful temptations to conquer you. I think that I didn't pray a lot because I didn't have a habit of praying as a child. I think my parents prayed, but they prayed by themselves. They never prayed with the family or anything, except at the dinner table. Since I never got into the habit of praying, I would only do it when I remembered to do it, or if I saw someone else doing it. I guess what I'm trying to say is, we need to be close to God for our spiritual survival, and even though praying isn't the only way to be close to him, it's still very important.