Strive to strengthen your faith. In time you will feel the need to pray. Your faith is not strong, that’s why it doesn’t urge you to pray. Once I saw that on a mill wheel was falling only a bit of water. And the wheel remained motionless. Then it fell a lot of water and the wheel started to move.
Faith is a spiritual power. A small faith doesn’t set your mind in motion towards mediation about God, nor does it set your heart in motion towards prayer to God. Big faith moves both mind and heart and the entire human soul. As long as someone has a big faith, by its power it moves his soul towards God.
You say that you read the words of the Savior: Your Father knows what you need before you ask Him and from these words you drew the conclusion that the prayer is of no use.
God knows indeed beforehand everything we need, though He wants us to pray to Him. It is easier to explain this thing to some parents and not to you who are not married. Look, the parents know beforehand what their children need, but they still wait to be asked by them – because the parents know that the prayer softens and ennobles the heart of their children, making them more obedient, humbler, milder, more dutiful, more merciful and nobler. You see how many divine sparkles are woken by the prayer in the human heart?
I read that a traveler stopped at a house beside the road. In that house the workers held a gathering. Silence fell instantly over the whole house. The workers knelt down for prayer and one of them got out and started to walk in front of the house. The traveler asked him what was happening inside.
“They pray to God.” “But I felt ashamed so I got out.”
The traveler remained silent and waited.
“Who are you waiting for?” the worker asked him.
“I am waiting for someone to get out of the house so that I could ask him about the way.”
“But why don’t you ask me?” “I can show you too.”
The traveler nodded and said:
“How could someone show the right path when he is ashamed of God and of his brothers?”
I think that you aren’t ashamed of prayer, but you have a weak faith, therefore look after the child inside yourself. When he grows up and becomes brave, he will reward your painstaking a hundredfold. The brave faith will set in motion the inner wheel of your being and you will gain a new life.
Peace to you and blessing from God!
Source: Bishop Nikolai Velimirovici, Answers at questions of the world of today, volume I, Sophia Publishing House, 2002
