About Prayer 12 Tammuz

בס"ד

I'm starting a new series of exercises and meditations about prayer.
The source of these ideas are in a book I recommend :
Praying with Fire:  Igniting the Power of Your Tefillah  A 5-minute Lesson-A-Day by Rav Heshy Kleinman, published by Artscroll Mesorah.

How does prayer work?
Most of us think of it in one of several ways:  thanks, connecting, requests.

Gving thanks and connecting are pretty clear.
But requests is a little problematic from the stand point that hashem is running the world, and He's One and perfect, so how can we ask for anything, to change the way things are if He's already got it all locked up and going the way it should be.  This world is an expression of His will, right?
Isn't it chutzpah, or ungrateful to pray to have things differently?
What is prayer doing?
Prayer, sincere and heartfelt, avodat halev, a work of the heart, changes us.
Once we have prayed, we are different people.
And then Hashem can relate to us differently, and change outcomes, situations  because we have worked on ourselves and we deserve something new, different than what had been up until we prayed.*

"the new person who emerges from the spiritual growth is deserving of a new level of Divine Blessing." pg. 73 ibid

Exercises :

Write about how the experience of prayer changes you.
Write about one thing what you would like change through prayer.




* Sefer Halkrim, Maamar 4, Ch. 18