Most people pray like they're placing an order. Name, request, amen, done. I did it that way for years before I found out I had the whole thing backward.
God is not a genie. You don't rub a lamp, list your wishes, and wait for the delivery truck. That's not a relationship — that's a transaction, and it treats the most important conversation in your life like a drive-through window.
I figured this out swimming laps underwater at a rehab facility in San Juan Capistrano during COVID. I'd committed to praying an hour a day while I swam — figured that was about as disciplined and godly as I could get with my time. About three minutes in, something stopped me cold. Not a voice. A realization: I was doing all the talking. I wasn't listening at all.
I'd spent my whole spiritual life performing prayer — talking at God with long lists and elaborate language, never once considering that prayer might run both directions, and that I'd been hogging the mic the entire time.
Here's how I break it down now. Prayer is when you talk. Meditation is when you listen. You need both. Most people only do the first one, then wonder why God feels distant or silent.
God isn't silent. You're just too loud to hear anything back.
When I stopped talking and started listening — floating underwater, holding my breath, emptying my head out — Psalm 1 showed up. Fully formed. Not something I was recalling from memory. It just arrived, and it had everything I needed in it.
I still pray every day, but it's got two parts now. The first part is talking — gratitude, requests, standing in the gap for other people. The second part is silence. No words, no agenda, just presence.
Sometimes that turns into what some people call speaking in tongues and others call flow-state vocalization — my mouth is making sound, but my mind isn't directing it. Whatever you want to call it, the effect is the same. I stop trying to control the conversation and let it move through me instead of forcing it.
That's when the real answers show up. Not during the performance. During the surrender.
If any part of this resonates, the Lotus Vault community talks through practices like this every week — you can find it at the link on our about page, or head straight to the group at skool.com/the-lotus-vault-3538.
