Most people like to pray from their hearts in private and in silence, this is thought to be the best way to pray to God because Nuns and Monks have learnt this down the ages.
When a prayer is performed, you usually offer your praise to God at the beginning, you could confess your sins in search of forgiveness then request Gods intervention, this means praying for others in need and finally their if thanksgiving for
Gods blessing. There are no set times in Christian tradition however, the Monastic community have seven times set aside for prayers each day.
Christians use aids to help them pray, i.e. a crucifix, statue, cross, or beads. Maybe this is to help create realism and all of the aids are symbolic for Christians. It creates realism because it personifies an object.
Christians can pray anywhere at any time, normally in private, which is why a church is a good place to pray, there is privacy and symbolic features which can create the perfect atmosphere.
Different religions express prayer in different ways; for example, meditation is a form of worship and confession. Meditation brings together two aspects, silence and vocal prayer, which emphasises more on silence, When meditation is performed, a person worshipping imagines that he is part of a story normally from the Bible which always leads back to moral religious issues.
In conclusion I would say that prayer and expressive worship is a vital part to a Christians life because it binds our beliefs on earth to beliefs in heaven or with god. As a communication it seems to me like it is un-satisfying because there is no answer, however, some strong believers could disagree with me, they could argue that they get inner messages from God’s spirit or they learn by receiving an answer from the fait that will happen in the future. But the people who believe in this have dedicated their lives to the religion, and follow ‘religious guidelines’, so for prayer to be effective do we need to shine new light on how we live today? Some people my age think that prayer is a bit of a gimmick, and half of me would like to agree but the other half of me sees it as something to lean on, not a last resort but a option which I always need by my side. Without prayer I would feel empty and shallow.
