How Prayer helps

In many instances when I talk about spiritual aspects with patients who suffer from depression or anxiety they express a need to feel closer to God, as many of them feel that they have been forsaken or left at the mercy of the world. They find themselves searching for ways to be closer to God, however still being angry at God as they feel that they don’t have a good or any relationship with God. Their solutions for these problems are to jump quite rapidly on an emotional spectrum from the need to pray more, go to church more and just generally doing everything MORE to a state where they don’t want to do anything at all.

The question I normally pose to them in this situation is: “Do you think you and your spouse will have a good relationship if you never talk about the things that hurt you or share anything about yourself?” The answer almost always is: “Of course not!” and I just point out that it is the same with your relationship with God. There is no way to have a relationship if you don’t talk to Him or learn more about Him. Personally I don’t think that this relationship is perfect all the time, but is not about developing the ‘perfect’ relationship, it is about building a relationship. We do this through prayer. The Bible is full of examples of how followers of God grew in a relationship with Him through prayer. Here are some of those prayers (Click here).