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eBook Category: Spiritual/Religion
eBook Description: This book is about creating a better life through prayer. Sharon Connors tested the power of prayer over and over as she grew from a frightened, impoverished, but determined single mother of two children to a senior minister who has brought the gift of prayer to thousands. The people she works with ask basic questions like: How should I pray? What if I'm afraid of God or angry at God? How do I know prayer is working? Is it all right to pray for myself and for specific things I want? How can I build my faith? This step-by-step guide provides honest, practical answers--and the inspiration to act on them. Sharon Connors teaches prayer as a learnable technique that improves with daily practice. She interweaves basic principles with moving personal stories from her own life and those she has served, and offers dozens of original prayers and affirmations that address readers' most urgent needs. Building on the conviction that the human mind is a powerful creative force designed to communicate with God, she first shows how to focus the power of mind in prayer. In each chapter that follows, she describes how to use prayer in specific circumstances, including: Healing broken relationships Seeking guidance in times of confusion Transforming the fear of change and mastering life's storms Building prosperity Learning to forgive Finding your purpose in life The final chapter, "Creating Miracles," teaches the "four ways of gratitude," which have the greatest power to turn around our lives. Reverend Connors has explored a wide range of prayer and healing approaches from many spiritual traditions, and these diverse practices are reflected in her book.

eBook Publisher: Bantam Books/Bantam Books
Fictionwise Release Date: September 2004

1 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [Secure eReader (recommended)/Mobipocket - What's this?]: SECURE MOBIPOCKET FORMAT [386 KB], SECURE EREADER (RECOMMENDED) FORMAT [210 KB]
All formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
eReader (recommended) ISBN: 9780553900
Microsoft Reader ISBN, Adobe Acrobat Reader ISBN: 0553900668
MobiPocket Reader ISBN: 9780553900668

Why Should I Pray?


Prayer makes one master in the realm of creative ideas.
--Charles Fillmore


Prayer helps us contact sources of inspiration and wisdom that transcend the rational, analytical side of the mind. Prayer provides a sense of hope and meaning--the certainty that we are a part of a pattern that is purposeful and intelligent.
--Larry Dossey



Dear God, I give thanks today to remember that You have a plan for my life and it's a good one; and that you will give me everything I need to fulfill that plan. Gather me now to be with You as You are with me; soothe my mind and melt my stresses and quiet my fretfulness. Release me from any fears that grip tightly that I may be open to receive all that You so generously give.

The very first thing I remember saying as a child was a prayer. My parents taught me a bedtime prayer, repeating it a phrase at a time until I could say it on my own. I can't remember if I understood the words, but I do remember that saying the prayer made me feel safe and secure.

I also remember lying in bed as a young adolescent and praying, from the depths of my as-yet unrecognized isolation, for Jesus to show up in my room. I imagined Jesus as a light being. Were He to appear, I figured, it would be a sign from God that I wasn't as alone as I felt, that I wasn't as doomed and helpless as I believed. In those days, I was scared to live and scared to die.

My yearning for this indescribable relationship with God even brought me to pray that I would receive the stigmata, which our religion books said were a sign of God's special favor and special power. Looking back, I can see that mine was a beseeching desire for a relationship with God that would give my life meaning and purpose and a sense of belonging to something greater than myself. I wanted to experience a sense of oneness with God. I wanted to feel loved and lovable. I wanted to know that my existence mattered and that my life had meaning.

As I matured, my prayers matured in content but not in motivation. I still grappled with issues of trusting God. Along the way there were many sublime moments when I felt complete trust, when my life held great meaning, when I felt a great sense of efficacy and purpose. But I couldn't seem to sustain that trust until I began to pray to a different kind of God, a God of unconditional love, a God whose purpose was to plumb my depths with goodness and reveal the riches of the kingdom of heaven within me that I might do my part in enriching everything put into my hands and path.

In all my slipping and sliding on the ice rink of faith, I have come to believe that God seeks us way more than we seek God and that our yearning for belonging and efficacy and meaning and purpose is actually God's yearning for us. It is this mutual attraction that is met and actualized in prayer.



Why Pray?


In the last year I started doing an informal survey of friends, colleagues, and groups I work with, asking them simply: Why do you pray? The overwhelming response was that people pray because prayer works. It gives them a connection to the Divine that they experience as help, comfort, hope, peace, guidance, and love. Some said that it gets their minds right and helps them feel at one with God and all of life. One man called prayer his direct-dial 800 number to God. He was only half joking, adding that he's learned that turning to God is always the best first choice.

Many...