God has uniquely created each one of us to interact with Him as individuals and your prayer style should be consistent with the way He designed you.

Be yourself, approach Him with your own personality, your strengths, weaknesses and everything that is you. In the book of  1 Samuel we read a story of Hannah,  heartbroken and grief stricken as she was childless in a society that considered not having a child the ultimate failure. When Hannah cried out to God she wasn’t on her knees with head bowed and whispering her petitions, rather the Word says she was ‘in bitterness of soul and wept in anguish’ chapter 1:12 . God wants to meet with you, He wants to take you just as you are.

I recall a time of desperate prayer on my knees in the pouring rain as I ‘wept in anguish’, God answered and my journey of healing began in that desperate moment. God loves that we come to Him with our emotions, our hurt, our true self, just as a parent does with his child. I want my children to feel they can come to me with all manner of problems, not hide their emotions under a veil of fear.

When my daughters come to me and show dependence on me as the role of a loving parent, I feel fulfilled, my heart bubbles with love in that they trust me with their deepest hurts.

In similar ways, the parent child relationship defines the attitude we ought to have in prayer an attitude that focuses on God and expresses absolute dependence on Him as Father, the One who gave us life and who loves, cares for, provides for, and protects us.

Sometimes at night I hear my little girl praying, not some mechanical script, but words that flow from a heart of thanksgiving and faith in a Heavenly Father that in her words, ‘makes everything okay because He loves me’. God is not manipulated by long-winded, rehearsed babbling but rather He is moved by our heart attitude, an attitude that seeks His presence… not His presents.