Prayer is .... Communicating our 'heart'.... to God

An overcast sky made the country night intensely dark & a light drizzle made the highway dangerously slippery..... 

On my way that night, as I passed a truck & pulled in front of it, my car struck a slippery patch of roadway and went slithering snake-like down the road out of control. 

Abruptly my car swung around and backwards with the truck almost on top of me!

In terror I prayed, "God, help!"

With only moments to spare, my car suddenly flipped sideways out of the path of the oncoming truck. 

But it kept skidding off the highway and down an embankment. 

Certain my car would now overturn, in terror I prayed again.
Amazingly, my car didn't overturn. 

Neither did it stop. 

It swung around and then went forward bouncing through a field. 

"Oh no," I thought. 

"Now I'll end up smashing into a tree." 

I thought my number was up. 

I prayed again.
Eventually my car stopped in front of some bushes. 

Miraculously, I missed every post by the roadside and every tree. 

I backed up a few feet, turned around and drove away without a single bruise to myself or a scratch on my car.........

Was my safety a coincidence or does God answer prayer?
In my experience, I have found that God definitely answers prayers. 

Some quickly; others slowly; and some with a "no"—or at least not the way I think they should be answered. 

Many have prayed identical prayers to mine, only to be severely injured or even killed in terrible auto crashes.

Prayer IS NOT a painkiller like a giant aspirin:

 'Take God three times a day and you won't feel any pain!'
So how should we pray? 

We live in a fallen, sinful world and we know that God does not promise to give us everything we want or to keep us from all suffering. In fact, the Bible tells us, 

"In this world you will have tribulation." John 16:33

So effective prayer is not a lucky charm to gain special favors. 

But even though we can't always get the answer we want at the moment we want it, God wants His children to communicate our desires to Him. 

"Prayer is communicating our heart to God."

Shalom