Do you want something to happen in your life, but you don’t know what to do to make it happen? You know you don’t have to be a religious person to pray. When people get in dire circumstances, they can find themselves praying even though they may have been a lifelong atheist. Prayer isn’t necessarily a religious thing… it’s a personal thing. Your child has been diagnosed with a serious medical problem, so you pray because you love your child so much. Your husband has just announced to you that he’s been having an affair and he’s leaving you. So you desperately reach out to a higher power out of desperation. Or you’ve been trying and trying to overcome a personal weakness, and you just can’t seem to get on top of it until you ask for help from above.
There are plenty of things that we can figure out on our own. There are many things that we can’t necessarily figure out on our own, but there is help from supportive friends or from professionals. The scientific knowledge of issues in mental health has exploded over the last couple of decades. We now know a lot of solid information about what solves a number of problems in life… conflict, intimacy, happiness, anxiety, depression.
So ask for help from people you know. Go see a professional, not because you are so messed up, or not because you are desperate, but because you can just get help faster that way. But ask also for help from above. To pray doesn’t require you to be involved in a church or religion. You don’t have to believe a set of rules or dogma. It just means that you have a need. You are acknowledging that there is something bigger than you, and you realize that if you’re going to get the help you need, it’s going to have to come from someone bigger than you.
Are you facing something overwhelming? Do you feel desperate about something? Have you lost the will to live and can’t even muster the energy to care? Ask for help from above. Just ask. Stop trying to figure it out, stop trying to just live with it, and instead ask. Try asking when you’re not desperate, and just consider that there may be help there for the asking. I believe there is a God listening and is ready to respond to what we need. But you don’t have to believe that. Just ask.
