Prayer

The little break from blogging was good for me. I was able to spend some extra prayer time with the Lord in the evenings. Though I pray throughout the day in various ways, I seem to need the intense quiet of the evening after my daughter is in bed to really spend quality time with God. I go in my bedroom, close the door and try to pray with all my heart. This is much easier to do when there is no noise. I like peace and quiet, always have. [Music is an exception.] My family has supersensitive ears; with the exception of one, we all wear earplugs to bed. I barely ever watch TV, go to the movies, go to malls or any loud places unless I have to, the noise bothers me. Natural noises don't make me feel this way, manmade noise does - electronic equipment, horns, alarms, trucks...
Sometimes I wonder:  If the world wasn't so noisy, would we hear the still, small voice inside easier? I think the answer is yes. I know that the Lord can make Himself heard in any situation but silence is best. Noise is distracting and can keep us from focusing on the spiritual by contantly drawing our attention to the world. Every person needs quiet time, even children. One of the best things a person can do for themself is to put aside some time each day to spend with the Lord in silence. The past few days I have been pondering prayer and have decided to do a few posts on prayer. These will be mostly personal observations of the different types of prayer that I have experienced in my own life, including some prayer gifts of the Holy Spirit. All prayer is a gift from God but certain types are charisms given by the Holy Spirit. I will touch upon vocal and mental prayer, intercessory prayer [ both basic and the gift of intercessory prayer], the prayer of suffering [ the charism], the prayer of silence, and contemplative prayer. Why do I call some charisms? Because, they  are begun by God, not the person. God draws the person deeply into them, sometimes out of the blue when they least expect it. Praying the scriptures is another one I have in mind.
Hopefully, with the Lord's help, I can explain them simply. Every person is unique, therefore every prayerlife is different but sometimes common threads run through them, so I thought it would be a good thing to write about. Prayer and charisms walk hand in hand, so I will blog a little about both. At least the ones I know about, I can't write about some of them because I don't have them. I am not a member of any charismatic group, the charisms that I do have came upon me unexpectedly. The Holy Spirit blows where He will for reasons only He knows.