Transcript of Episode #176: How to Pray: God Already Knows What You're Hiding! - Dylan Gemelli

If you say this out loud, God, how do I pray? You're praying. It's supposed to be something that relaxes your mind and your body. Prayer is that intricate time that you have alone with your thoughts, with God. Somebody like me who used to always say, I just figure things out, I have all the answers, I'm just good at that.

No, it took me a long time through prayer to realize that it was never me. You can't trick God, you can't play God, you can't confuse him, you can't negotiate with him. Prayer is not something that you do out of fear because you feel like you better do it or you're going to get in trouble or something's going to get taken from you. Conversation is not when one person talks the whole time and nobody else says anything and just sits there and listens. That's not really a conversation.

That's venting. Part of prayer is listening. So what does that mean? How do you listen to God? That's a little bit deeper of a question.

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Yes, I have my own studio completely set up now, just the way that I like it. As you can see behind me, Mind, Body, and God. The belief set and system that I have for teaching people to become complete and totally healthy, to get that full health alignment. If you haven't heard, my podcast studio had to close its doors. And immediately upon hearing that, I, within the Holy Spirit speaking to me, called my wife and said, you know what?

When one door closes, a bigger and better one opens. And so, here we are. It is the biggest blessing. I also have my area in the other room for all of my guests, but this is gonna be my new setting for all my solo and virtual episodes. So I am beyond ecstatic.

And I couldn't think of a better topic than what I have for you today to talk about. So really what I wanna talk to you about today is me giving you an explanation on how to pray. I know that this could be a topic of polarization potentially, Or one where we have people trying to come up with these really deep, intricate answers. And I'm here to tell you that it is nothing of the sort. One, not polarizing.

Two, not some crazy detailed, in-depth answer that a Rhodes Scholar has to have the answers to. No, no, no, no, no, my friends. If you say this out loud, God, how do I pray? You're praying. Any single type of conversation that you have with God, praying to Jesus, praying to the Holy Spirit, you are praying.

That conversation, that talk, it is prayer. You know, a lot of people, they'll say, God, help me, or, oh my God, or different types of phrases. When you call out to God in the right way, when you're trying to have a conversation with him, Anything that you're thinking about in your mind that you need his help for, that's prayer. So trying to make prayer something that it's not is what a lot of people do. And I've done it most of my life, trying to make it difficult, trying to make it complex, trying to make it something that is something other than what it truly is, is not what he wants nor what you should want.

Creating confusion and taking away from what it really is. See, prayer is supposed to be something that relaxes your mind and your body. Prayer is that intricate time that you have alone with your thoughts, with God, where all you're doing is conversing, talking, listening. So think about this. And this one got me.

And Father Mike Schmitz was giving a homily one time and he was talking about this and it dawned on me. And it was something along the lines of, when you're talking to your wife or your friends, your mom, your dad, do you just talk the whole time and never listen? What's part of a back and forth of a conversation? A conversation is not when one person talks the whole time and nobody else says anything and just sits there and listens. That's not really a conversation.

That's venting. Or complaining or whatever.

Whatever you want to call it. So, part of prayer is listening. So, what does that mean? How do you listen? How do you listen to God?

Well, that's a little bit deeper of a question. What I can tell you is this, it requires stillness. It requires you to eliminate distraction. And that just takes you sitting there and trying to listen. You know, for me, It's hard because when I pray, I talk way too much.

I have a lot to say. I don't know when to stop at times, but then I have to take a deep breath and say, okay, it's time to listen. Sometimes because I keep talking and I'm saying things out loud and I may be asking questions, I say the answer while I'm asking the questions. And it's not because I came up with the answer, 'cause I certainly did not. It's the Holy Spirit trying to talk.

Through me because I won't shut up and listen. And I'll laugh and I'll have a laugh with God. And, you know, I think that most do know and some may not, he knows everything. He knows what's in your heart. He knows what you're thinking.

He knows what you're doing. But it's just like a child having a conversation with the parent. The parent just wants to hear it. They just want to hear it coming from you. They just want you to want To share it.

And that's all he wants, your time and your actual real desire to be there. See, prayer is not something that's forced. Prayer is not something that you do out of fear because you feel like you better do it or you're going to get in trouble or something's going to get taken from you or anything of the sort. That's not really prayer. Prayer is your desire and want to talk to God, to tell him what you're thinking, what you're going through.

Your problems, your happiness, your sorrows, all of it. He wants it all, but you have to want to give it to him. And don't be afraid to ask for help or ask him to carry you. He wants you to depend on him. See, somebody like me who used to always say, oh, I, I just figure things out.

I have all the answers. I'm just good at that. No, no, no, no, no, no. It took me a long time through prayer to realize that it was never me. None of it was me.

The only thing that I did that allowed me to come up with solutions and answers was listen. But instead, I wanted to take all the credit. Ego can get in the way of prayer. Our thinking that we can do anything on our own, that we have to do everything on our own. No, that's not what God wants.

He wants you to go to him. He wants you to depend on him. He wants you to rely on him. And he wants you to ask.

Ask. Now I'm going to do a separate set of video or explanation on what do you pray for. But before I get into that more in depth, part of the reason that people don't get what they pray for is because it's not necessarily what you're supposed to get. And just because you ask doesn't mean you'll receive. If you, if your kids ask you for everything under the sun and you give them Everything they ask for, that's not really great parenting.

And it's kind of setting them up for failure because that's not how life works. We don't just get everything that we ask for. There's perplexing reasons why at times, and sometimes I think it's rather obvious. But if you're not intended to have something, then you're not going to obtain it or get it. I've prayed for things that I didn't realize I didn't want.

In the past. You should be careful what you pray for and think about it and think about the repercussion or ramification of what you may get by praying too hard for something as well. And not blaming God when something goes wrong, that's not prayer. That's— and he wants you to tell him what's on your mind, ask for that kind of help that you need if you're angry with him. Say it.

Confess your sins. Be, be honest, because he knows. You can't trick God. You can't play God. You can't confuse him.

You can't negotiate with him. You know, I used to do things like that in my head and my heart. I know I did. I know for sure I did. I didn't want to admit it at the time, but I know, I know what I was doing.

And we all do. And we all have this type of way of trying to convince ourselves. And so it's easy to do that in prayer. Another thing that's easy to do is pray when you're desperate, when something's bad, when you want something. But do you pray when things are going good?

I'm kind of one of those people that's on the weirder side where I have an easier time praying when things are going really well. When most people forget, they only kind of get into prayer mode when they need something desperately or something's really bad, or there's a scary situation going on. I tend to kind of shut down In those times and kind of, I don't want to say moan and pout, but I don't, I don't always deal with those situations the best. So I've kind of had to reverse order my work because when things are going good, I'm kind of the most prayerful. I really don't forget.

I'm full of thanks and gratitude. You got to be good on both ends. Good, bad, indifferent. You need to go to him. You need to pray.

And I'll tell you this.

I understand, and I'm not trying to say nobody ever needs medications and nobody ever needs antidepressants or anything, but I can guarantee you they're overused. I can tell you with wholehearted million percent certainty, without a question, without a shadow of a doubt, that people are fed these things when they don't need them. We become reliant upon them and they cause creator— or they create bigger and worse problems. Becoming reliant on any sort of medication to try to heal you and fix things like that not the answer. But I will, will say for me and what I've learned and what I want to convey is there is no greater relief, anti-anxiety, antidepressant than prayer and feeling God's presence.

When I, when I pray to Jesus and I talk to him and I can sense and feel that he's there, because you can, because they— the— he is present, but you have to listen. You know, people want signs all the time and they want to see, and that's not faith. That's not trust. That doesn't work. But he will let you know that he's there.

And when he does, and I have a small chill saying it because I know he's here. I know he's given me the words to say, and now I can feel it all through my back. And I love that. It used to jolt me and now it's, I smile inside and say, I know you're here. I know you're with me.

But his presence, and you feel it, your world gets flipped upside down in the best way possible. All of these worries and concerns, they seem to disappear, even if it's just in that moment. And your ability to not be stressed, to not have these worries and things that kind of dominate your life, they go away. And it's not by distraction, it's not by chance, it's not by accident, it's not by masking something like a medication may, or like a cortisone shot when it's masking an injury. No, no, no, no, no.

This, you get real healing by faith, by prayer, by reaching out, by losing your egos, asking for virtues that you need to be successful in life. See success and what we define and look at it. You can really look at success when you're close with God and you have an understanding of what you really have. What's really there. And that can be obtained through prayer, understanding, you know, virtues and things that make you the most successful in life.

You're not going to earn those. You got to pray for them. You have to ask to be given those qualities, wisdom, knowledge, fortitude, endurance, temperance, patience, things I pray for every single day. Faith, hope, and love, piety, charity, compassion.

You know, these things, you start to wonder where they are, why you don't have them. Pray for them. Ask, ask. And you'll, you'll see. You know, when you stare in the mirror all the time and somebody will tell you, wow, you lost weight, or something that you don't notice because you see yourself every day.

You have to step back and think, look, take it from the outside looking in, and then you can start to see, wow, look at before and afters and things like that. I've prayed for quite a few of these virtues and can't really tell because I pray for them every day. And then I take a step back and then I start to go run down and I think about it. I'm like, whoa, okay. The past couple weeks, things that have changed.

Well, the virtues that I received are the reason that things changed. And I can go back and look and say, wow, I asked for compassion and I've felt better. And then I can think back to, okay, I handled that situation way better than I have in the past. It made me feel better. Let me tell you something right now.

It does not feel good to be angry, negative, things that we start to have be more of a consistent pattern in our life, it doesn't feel good. It doesn't. It makes you feel bad about yourself and you don't even realize it till a little bit later. When you're lacking wisdom and you don't know how to use a lot of the knowledge or things that you have, it doesn't feel right. But when you have it and you start to see and piece things together, it's like the whole world opens up for you.

You know, if you think back, and I say this 'cause I think most of us fall into this category. When you actually sat and studied for a test, like when you really studied and then you got in front of the paper and you looked down and you're just running through it and it's like, I already know this, know this, know this, know this. You might hit one or two that you don't, but you just, you run through it. Or when you sit there and you look at it and it looks like a complete foreign language. You know, you don't want that feeling.

You don't want that lost feeling. When you don't have prayer and God at the center, You will have that lost feeling. You will. And you won't know why. And people will not attribute it to that.

And they'll turn away from that. And there's going to be people that are angry with this, this whole synopsis that I'm giving you and explanation. And that's, you know, I will pray for you. And hopefully, if you can just realize certain things that go on around you. When you laugh, when something makes you laugh, when you smile, what do you think that is?

That's love. That's how we were designed. God is love. He created out of love. Jesus preaches love.

Everything and all of the number one commandments, they revolve around love. You, you all have it in you, whether you believe it or not, whether you don't want to believe it. It's there. I assure you it's there. And there's a reason.

So all of this is there. We were designed to love him, to love others. And we become jaded, we become misled, we have people in our ears. I know I have. I am far from perfect.

And don't think because I'm, I'm giving you this explanation, like every single day is la-dee-da-dee-da great. I have all kinds of days where I complain. Um, I, I even in prayer say, I'm, I'm, I'm really getting angry today. Like, I'll say it. I mean, why hide anything or beat around the bush from somebody that already knows?

Everything that you're thinking or is in your heart. That's not the answer. That's not prayer. That's a facade. That is a lie.

And that is being misleading to him and to yourself, which doesn't feel good. Let me tell you something. When you say what's on your mind, what's really on your heart, when you admit things that are wrong, it in itself is such a relief. When you do things that you know are wrong and you're thinking things that are wrong and you have these different parts of your life that are off, when you say it and you get rid of it, there's no— It is so liberating. It's so, so, so healthy to get it off your chest and to get it out.

And it will allow you to be so much better in every aspect of your life. It will heal your soul. And that's what we want and what we need. So prayer, what is it? It's talking to God, time alone, time of stillness, time free of distraction, time to find yourself.

Because through prayer, you will find things about yourself that you didn't know were there. You wanna really figure out what's your purpose, discern what you were put here for. I'll tell you what, there's one way to figure that out. You can look up and down, left and right, every which way. There's one way.

It's God's way. It's talking to him. It's asking for guidance. Not just for answers immediately, guidance, help, teach me what I need to know. Allow me all of these opportunities that I'm supposed to have.

Steer me away from the ones that I shouldn't. I used to get so angry and upset about so many different things that, for instance, my wife would tell me, I don't feel comfortable in this situation. I don't think this is a good, good situation for you to be in. I don't think you should do this. Opportunities that I thought, oh my gosh, I better do this or the world's going to end type of thing.

And then I looked back on a couple of things and I realized, wow, she was right. But why was she right? Is it because she knows everything? No. It's because she was talking to me from the Holy Spirit who was trying to get through to me, 'cause I wasn't listening on my own.

'Cause you have people around you that love you, that God will talk through to get to you so that you'll listen. And I've realized that it's like when you're a kid and you hate a lot of the things that your parents say or they make you do, and then you get older and you realize that you're quite thankful that they taught you some of the things they did, or— grounded you when they did and didn't allow you to do certain things, you realize when you got older how valuable that was. I realize how valuable it is when I have somebody like her that God speaks through to me. And now when I know, and I either am able to listen better or she tells me, my mom tells me, somebody that I care about, I know it's Holy Spirit talking to me. I'm always like, okay, whatever.

No biggie, let's move on. Let's do something fun today or do something else. I can shake it off in a second and not think twice nor care. When you get tied in in prayer, all of these things that you think mean something, they don't mean anything. You realize they're nonsense.

It has made me not like, like my dad was just like super casual, you know, and just like, You'd say, and everybody used to just say, man, he's really cool. And I want to be that way, but I also want— I don't want to, I don't want to go overboard. But at the same time, you don't want to be stressed all the time and worried and bothered. And that's not how you were intended to live, but it requires trust, trust in what God put you here to do. And that can only be obtained through prayer and talking to him.

How do you obtain all of these things, this trust, this understanding? Prayer. Prayer. I mean, prayer is really the answer to almost everything. Go do it.

Let him guide you. Let him answer. Let him carry you. He doesn't want you stressed. He doesn't want you sick, any of those things.

But a lot of these things, they can be handled simply through you taking the time to sit and talk and pray. So, my friends, that is the answer of how do you pray? It's not crazy. It's not some detailed, deep thing that can't be explained. No, no.

Just got to come from your heart. Conversation, just like I'm having with you. So that being said, from the brand new studio that I am so blessed to have, stay tuned for plenty more to come. Dylan Gemelli signing off.