Steps to Prayer

Going into adolescence, I had begun to contemplate prayer. I didn’t get it and didn’t even like it. When I listened to others pray, all I heard was a cynical blah, blah, blah. I wanted to know how to “really” pray. When Jesus prayed, mountains moved for him, fish and bread multiplied, people were healed and lives were saved. I wanted that! So I prayed and prayed, modifying my prayers to be more detailed, more exact. And one day, as a young wife and mother, I had been given the keys to prayer.

I had been driving down a dirt road in Montana, when a fearful realization came to me that my husband and I were going more broke by the minute and we needed to get out of debt in order to survive. This great need was forming in my mind. I was becoming more passionate about it, knowing the only way out of my situation was to pay off our debt. It was that knowing that provoked me to scream: “I need twenty thousand dollars!” This was out of character, but I realized that through the power of my asking I had become a part of something bigger.


Within two days, we found that a rental house we had owned had burned to the ground and the insurance on it was a simple twenty thousand dollars. Now I began to realize this was more than prayer; it was manifestation. And the keys were specific: having a connection with my personal guides, knowing what I wanted, asking with confidence, being positive and knowing that I would be responsible for the outcome.

Things since have not always come to me so quickly. I believe some requests need time to cure, to become real in their own time. But the universe always provides! This was a big revelation and I began to have a more consistent rapport with the unseen world. I knew it was there and would always provide as I asked specifically to be cared for.

5 Steps to Prayer
1. Allow yourself to realize a problem or desire. For instance, maybe you would like to own your own home.

2. Next, take some time to realize your desire in its entirety (in its truth). As you consider owning a home, try skinning down your image to a need. For example: Wanting to own a home might allow you a nest egg in your retirement. Though, if you push things along with your own intention and without considering your deeper need, you may be purchasing with the wrong timing. After all, there are many who purchased a home in 2006 who have wished they hadn't. Ask yourself, "What is my deepest need in owning a home?" Is it a need for security and safety? When you pray, you would then ask for security and safety, not a home to own.

3. There is a difference between needs we are willing to have filled and needs we don't - there are those that will take us to a place we don't really want to go. For example: We all have a need for pleasure, but at what cost? Are you willing to live in an extravagant home by the water with a mate we don't feel safe with? Are you willing to own, on your own, a mansion that is way over your budget? Are you willing to own a home at the expense of someone else's misfortune? Maybe you are and maybe you aren't.

4. The most important step in prayer is knowing what you want to happen in your life. These are all questions that will move you toward truly knowing what you want and will feed your now emotional request.

5. When we lead ourselves to a place where we have deeply felt our need in its basic truth, we are ready to ask. Audibly or silently, by yourself or with another, just ask.