How to ask for help from God and Higher Powers? Practical advice. How to ask God for help

What to ask God in prayers? “First of all, we must know that it is not permissible for us to ask for everything we want, and that in any case we are not able to ask for something useful. With great prudence, petitions should be made, conforming them to the will of God. And the unheard need to know that

17.10.2014

Sometimes each of us understands that the support of loved ones is not enough, and therefore we turn to God for help. Someone constantly reads an oral prayer, saying it loudly for all to hear or in a whisper, only for God and himself. Everything will depend on the need. After all, some during prayer reject all their dreams and thoughts about their sins, but, apparently, they are good, since God gives us his faithful prayer at the right time. Such prayers are heartfelt and sincere.

How to Appeal to God

The main form of a person's conversation with the Lord is prayer at home. Of course, at best, it will be an appeal to God in front of the icon, near a lit candle. So, Orthodox people they pray standing, but only sick or old people can sit during prayer.

You need to start the prayer with a sign of the cross, it starts from the forehead, stomach, right shoulder, then left. Since a person understands that we are all not without sin, it is customary to accompany prayer with a bow, thus we symbolize our reverence before the Lord. A person, praying, will ask for help in any difficult situation for him. It is wrong to look for the best blessings in your prayer, but you need to ask for them.

You can also ask for help from angels, who are divine creatures that are able to connect the heavenly world and the earthly one. Asking them is very simple, you just need to be able to correctly formulate your desires and intentions, it is not necessary to speak out loud, because you can do it to yourself.

A person can, just like the Lord, call for help in difficult situation. By the way, this does not say at all that only a saint or a believer can ask for help, therefore, the main thing is only to believe that a person will be heard and they will be helped. Regular appeal to angels, not only in bad life situations, but also in good moments of life, will speak of your gratitude to these divine creatures.

Prayer in the Temple

The main place in the life of all Christians will be occupied by prayer speech in the Church. While before the start of the service a note is given to the priest or his assistants with the remembrance of the dead, it is also worth buying candles. Approaching to put a candle, it is worth crossing yourself, while turning to God or a saint. For example, you need to say: "Jesus, Lord, have mercy on me a sinner." Light candles, so you join the service of God. But remember that participation in this action must be meaningful, you must understand that you are speaking to the Lord, asking him and the saints. In order not to get tired during the service, it is worth taking part in chants with the choir and bowing.

After describing the structure of the services, it is worth asking one extremely important question - perhaps the central one for this book. The question was formulated by one of the readers of the first version of this book before its release...

Often believers come to church to venerate icons. Therefore, it is important to understand how to do it correctly. When you put a candle at the altar and decided to venerate the icon, you must: - observe ...

Dear reader, I think that both in your life and in the life of people close to you, you happened to observe how a person “discovers” this or that area of ​​culture for himself. This happens, for example, with music. One of my good friends...

The question is actually very important! It was asked by Tatyana: Please tell me how to ask for your own, because many people will forgive and ask all their lives, but not all of their requests and prayers are fulfilled. Why does God hear some prayers and help to fulfill them, and it happens that almost instantly, while heaven remains indifferent to other prayers? And if there are any rules - how to ask correctly to be heard?

Very, very good questions! Indeed, not all prayers are fulfilled exactly as people ask, and there are reasons for this. Indeed, there are rules that must be taken into account when you ask the Higher Powers for something. I will try to answer in detail, although we have already talked about a lot in other articles. Links will be provided in the text.

How to ask God to hear you and help you

I repeat once again - God and the Higher Powers are not gold fish and not a genie from a bottle, and serving people is not their task, fulfilling all the desires of those who ask (this would be terrible and disastrous for humanity)! The Higher Powers realize the Intentions of the Creator, the Will of God, you want to know more about this -. Best of all, in my opinion, she said this:

I asked for strength - and God sent me trials to harden me.
I asked for wisdom - and God sent me problems to puzzle over.
I asked for courage - and God sent me danger.
I asked for love - and God sent the unfortunate who need my help.
I asked for blessings - and God gave me opportunities.
I didn't get anything I wanted, but I got everything I needed!
God heard my prayers...

But this does not mean that God and the Higher powers will not help people achieve their goals and dreams. Of course they will!

It should also be noted that it is not always God who helps a person in the fulfillment of his desires. It all depends on the desires (goals) and motives of the person. If the goals are worthy and the motives are pure, the Forces of Light will help. If the goals are dark, destructive, or the motives are negative, evil, selfish (revenge, deceit, harm) - a person can get help, but only from. And he will pay for such help with his soul and fate (slavery), and plus he will still have to answer for sins (experienced suffering).

When and why will God not help a person in his requests?

1. When a person turns to God and asks for something unworthy: evil for someone, undeserved benefits for oneself, etc.

2. If a person is not sincere in his thoughts and prayers. for instance, a person asking God for something, promises Him something in his prayers. God helps him, but the man is not going to fulfill his promises given to God.

3. If a person bargains with God, as in a bazaar and sets conditions for Him. For instance: “If you, God, do something to me, or give me something, then I, so be it, will be a good girl or boy”. Bargaining with God is useless, this is a nasty approach to using God for your petty selfish interests. All requests must be sincere and pure, and come from the very depths of yours.

4. If a person brazenly lies, he promises and does not do it, and so many times. for instance, a person comes to church, asks something from God and promises that he will not slander, he will work, etc. And as soon as he leaves the church, he immediately forgets about his promises, immediately curses those going to the meeting, pours dirt, and is not even going to work. There are more than enough such examples.

5. When, for example, you ask for another person, but he does not deserve this help from God. This does not mean that you do not need to pray for him, but it means that the decision to help or not help this person always remains with God, He knows best.

6. If a person does not ask for something, i.e. his requests are directed in the wrong direction, contrary to the Will of God. for instance, you ask God to help you enter the Faculty of Law, and you have karmic tasks in the field of education, and you need to enter pedagogy. Or you want to go to Japan and ask the Higher Powers about it, and They have prepared a fate for you with moving to Germany, for example. In this case, no matter how much you ask for something “of your own”, you will meet obstacles until you realize that you are trying to go in the wrong direction. Here, of course, it is desirable to get help, in which you can find out your own, and adjust your plans in accordance with the Will Higher Forces.

7. When you want something, ask God for it, but you haven't met the preconditions for it. For example, a person asks to be healed of some kind of illness, but he himself is not going to change. As he was embittered and offended by the whole world, he continues to be angry and offended, but at the same time he asks for healing from cancer, the cause of which is the grievances he has accumulated. Until he realizes the cause of the disease and starts working on himself, fulfilling all the conditions, he will not receive special help.

8. The most brazen option. When a person asks for something, but he himself is not going to do anything at all. His “Give” directed to God is of no interest to anyone: give me a prince (and the little girl herself is not well-groomed), give me money (but I won’t work), give me beautiful body(but I don’t want to go in for sports), etc. Billions of such “Give” are sent to God every day, but the industrious Heaven will never listen to such insolent and lazy people.

There are other reasons why God does not respond to requests, such as ingratitude, when a person is eternally dissatisfied with what he receives and does not appreciate at all what he already has in life. The main reasons are listed, although there are others.

How to ask God to help you! Practical recommendations

1. Ask only for what is worthy! To wish good for yourself (first of all for your Soul), other people and this world. Evil - you need to desire justice (fair punishment from Above), and not evil.

2. Motives, your thoughts - must be pure! Be sincere to yourself, for no one can outwit God. Ask yourself - for what and for whom are you asking anything from God? And answer this question honestly. Next, find pure selfless motives for yourself.

3. Do not bargain with God and be ready to accept any of His Will! Be ready to accept any response from God with gratitude, this will increase your chances of getting what you want. Ask actively, but inwardly before the Omnipotence and Wisdom of God.

4. Act yourself! “Trust in God, but don’t make a mistake yourself”. Remember, God helps, but does not do for you. Ask and do from your side everything that depends on you. The law works like this - the more you yourself take responsibility for your goal, the more help you receive from Above. God does not help idlers. They must first be willing to overcome their laziness and prove themselves worthy of His help.

5. Keep your promises to God! If you promised something to the Higher Forces in your prayers, try to follow this with all your might! And it is better to always write down what you promise, so as not to become empty talk before God. you will be helped as much as possible if you fulfill your obligations. The highest patronage of God always has a Man of Honor, and not a deceiver!

6. The most beloved requests of God that you need to know! The best thing you can ask for (which is most encouraged by the Higher Powers): A) The most effective development for your soul B) Understand and realize C) Know the Truth, find out the Truth D) Recognize and atone for your Sins E) Cultivate worthy personal qualities in yourself (become responsible, strong, worthy) F) Understand and realize your own and your Purpose G) Serve God and Society - bring the greatest good for this world. Other.

These are the requests in the embodiment of which God will help a person to the maximum!

7. Be grateful for everything you already have in life! For all the good things - thank you! For all the trials and lessons in which you have become stronger, wiser - thank you! First of all, God helps the grateful! And from those who are not grateful and eternally dissatisfied - it takes away what they do not value.

If you have any questions -!

Ask God for earthly blessings Orthodox tradition somehow not accepted. Any Christian knows from the Gospel that the Lord provides all these benefits to people, as they say, “by default”: ... do not say: what shall we eat? or what to drink? Or what to wear? because the Gentiles are looking for all this, and because your Heavenly Father knows that you need all this.

But still, sometimes you want to turn to Him with something like that ... mundane and ordinary. The range of such requests can be very wide. From the childish “Lord, make it so that tomorrow morning the frost will be thirty degrees and I won’t go to school” - to an adult, but no less naive “Lord, give me money for a car-apartment-dacha-a trip-to- Turkey! Probably, there are very few people in the Church who have never in their lives said something like this in their souls, especially at the beginning of their churching. This is a certain stage in the spiritual development of a believer, a kind of spiritual childhood, when very simple things and values ​​seem to be the most desirable. I will try to tell a few stories about such "children's prayers" here.

"The Beast" Seryoga

Once I happened to witness the very first prayer in the life of an adult. It was in the early nineties. I then got a job at a construction site as a bricklayer's apprentice, but in fact - an assistant. For some reason, the employees of our organization called the brigade in which I was assigned “animals”. The storekeeper, giving me overalls, asked:

Who will you work for?

At Karpukhin.

Oh, too much! she threw up her hands. - This means that you were abandoned to the "animals"?

I was surprised:

Why so harsh? Are they there, biting you?

If you work, you will find out, - the storekeeper sighed. - All right, come on, sign it.

I signed for a quilted jacket, a wrinkled hat with earflaps, and a pair of felt boots, hard as stone. And he went to the site to the mysterious "beasts".

No special ferocity in them, thank God, was found. Ordinary Russian peasants, who graduated from a vocational school after a village eight-year-old and laid bricks all their lives at various construction sites in their native region. Their only drawback could be considered a funny professional snobbery: in assessing any person, they considered the ability to lead brickwork. All those who, for some reason, did not master this simple art, were considered by the "animals" as representatives of the lower caste. With the right attitude towards them.

I didn't know how to lay bricks then. And I honestly admit: I have never received so many swear words either before or after this apprenticeship. In fact, almost all of them were for the cause: a musician at a construction site is a sad sight. I brought the brick at the wrong time and in the wrong place, I stirred the mortar in a huge trough too slowly and incorrectly. In short, he did everything wrong. And for each incorrectly performed action, I immediately received on the “great and mighty” another portion of information about who I am, where I should go, where my hands grow from and what they did me. Only two people in the "brutal" brigade did not swear - an elderly bricklayer Aunt Anya and a thirty-year-old guy Seryoga. Aunt Anya was a believer, which at that time was still considered exotic. And Seryoga is just a cheerful person who is not particularly hacked off by his professional exclusivity. The rest of the "animals" worked with concentration and gloomily. Serega, at work, always yelled some stupid songs and jokes that are not in any folklore collection.

Oh, shikaldy-baldy-yaldy! Lived with a pullet, walked with vodka - never worked! - joyfully rushed from the nook, where he erected another pier. The “animals” frowned even more, and grumbled angrily:

Works without a soul. Empty man.

And Seryoga continued to bawl:

Eh, my friend and I worked on the northern tracks, returned to the village - he is in galoshes, I am in bast shoes!

This cheerful bricklayer, before my very eyes, acquired the very first experience of prayer in his life. It happened like this. After dinner, we sat in the trailer and waited for the solution. In theory, if the ordered machine with the solution does not appear at the construction site before three o'clock, it means that on that day it will no longer be there, and by five you can safely go home. But if the car still comes, say, at half past five, then you will have to take the solution and work it out up to seven hours.

It was blizzard on the street. "Beasts" at the table recklessly cut into card game with an obscene name. Aunt Anya was dozing in the corner by the stove. And the usually rollicking Seryoga that day for some reason behaved quietly. He did not sit down to play cards, smoked, and looked thoughtfully out the snow-covered window. Then he turned around and called:

Anh, listen...

What do you want? - the awakened Aunt Anya muttered displeasedly.

You are a pilgrim, aren't you?

Well. What about you?

Now... God hears everything I say?

Everything. Probably, I'm tired of listening to your nonsense, - Aunt Anya turned back to the wall and closed her eyes.

Wait a minute, - Seryoga came up and squatted next to him. - But, for example, does God hear my thoughts or not?

Hears. He hears and sees everything. Because - God.

Seryoga digested what was said for a few seconds. Then he moved back to his original place and stared out the window again.

About forty minutes later a car came with the solution. Brigadier Karpukhin swore softly through his teeth and began to pull on his quilted jacket. The rest of them also hurried along. And only Seryoga's face burned with genuine resentment:

You're lying, Anna! Your God hears nothing. I asked him for half an hour not to bring the solution today. And what? Now poking around for another two hours in the cold!

Aunt Anya looked at him sternly, tightening her warm handkerchief over her chest. And said:

You are a fool, Seryoga. Went to work.

Sergei was silent for a couple of seconds. Then he sighed, took his hat from the table and went out into the blizzard.

Aunt Anya hardly read the works of Gregory of Nyssa. But in her short answer, she miraculously managed to express the thought of the Saint: “... one who, during prayer, strives not for what is useful to the soul, but asks God to show favor to the passionate movements of his mind, is really an absurd person, praying that God became the co-operator and minister of his vanities.” I really hope that for the cheerful "beast" Seryoga this first appeal to God was not the last.

Rats

One day my wife performed a real miracle with the help of prayer. True, there is no such prayer in any prayer book, and the miracle itself is, well, very ... specific, or what? However, it is better to tell everything from the very beginning.

After several years of wandering through rented apartments, we finally bought ourselves a house. With gas, with running water, with sewerage, with a garden and a kitchen garden - well, what else does a large family need? Live and be happy! However, some problems cannot even be imagined until you encounter them firsthand. In late autumn, ... rats came to our house. With the first serious frosts, they prudently left their holes in the field and moved to a "winter apartment" - closer to warmth and food. And it must happen that this rat invasion happened during my departure for the next construction "coven".

My poor wife was on the verge of complete despair. Imagine: there are four small children in the house, and the youngest is not yet a month old. And closer to the night under the floor begins a terrible fuss, trampling and angry screeching. Then along the walls here and there tailed gray shadows begin to flicker, and all this hellish cacophony sounds already in the room, from under the beds ...

The wife spent two nights without sleep guarding the cribs. She no longer had the strength to stay on duty for the third night. Then she stood in front of the icons and said: “Lord, you see, I can’t do anything about it. Now I'm going to sleep, and these creatures can bite my children. Get them out of here, please." Then poured into a bowl Epiphany water and walked all over the house, sprinkling corners, floors and walls. And then the rattling stopped. Not in an hour or two, not after some time, but immediately. The surprised wife tried to hear at least a rustle, but in vain. There was silence in the house. Exhausted from two sleepless nights, she lay down on the bed and immediately fell asleep.
My poor wife was on the verge of complete despair. Imagine: there are four small children in the house, and closer to night, a terrible rat fuss and an evil squeal begin under the floor.

The next day the rats did not come. There was no more noise, no more stomping, no more screeching. Just in case, my wife sat for a couple of days after midnight with the lights on, but the tailed neighbors did not appear. They were found only when I arrived and climbed into the cellar for potatoes. Seven large dead rats lay on the ground not far from each other. I collected them in a bucket and took them to the field, from which they came to our house at an unkind hour. After that, we did not have rats for several years. Such a strange miracle...

The legendary Pied Piper of Hamelin drowned the hordes of rats that bothered the city with the help of a magic pipe. My wife managed to do much the same with her naive but sincere "self-made" prayer. Apparently, John of Kronstadt wrote about something similar: “It’s good sometimes in prayer to say a few of your own words, breathing with ardent faith and love for the Lord. Yes, it’s not all about talking with God in other people’s words .., but you also need to show your mind .., moreover, we somehow get used to other people’s words and grow colder. And how pleasing the Lord is this our own babbling, coming from a believing, loving and grateful heart: it is impossible to retell.

"Dog" Prayer

I also had the experience of such a “childish” request to God, which He fulfilled. Although it was a very stupid, and even stupid request. Tell me, did any of you pray for the well-being of the dog? Not? Then I'll tell you now how it's done.

The fly appeared with us about five years ago. One fine summer morning, we found a puppy on our open veranda. Apparently, someone planted it, knowing that children live in the house. Quite a small dog crawled into Dollhouse daughters, and looked at us from there through the window with brown eyes, as if asking: “In general, I myself don’t understand how I ended up here. But since it happened this way, can I stay with you to live?

The puppy, of course, was left. The children called him a beautiful and heroic name Mukhtar. But upon closer examination, it turned out that Mukhtar is a girl. The name was immediately abbreviated in a feminine way - Fly. So a charming creature appeared in our house, which very quickly became a full member of the family. A beautiful red dog, smart and affectionate, Mukha possessed all the virtues of a dog that the owners can only dream of. From the very first day she asked to use the toilet outside. She ate very delicately, food was never scattered. When she grew up, she played all day in the yard with the children, and at night she regularly guarded the house, barking from the veranda of drunkards who had lost their way and horses walking on free grazing. In general, we got the right dog. And only one "flaw" showed up in Mukha about a year later: according to the laws of her canine nature, she regularly brought seven, eight, or even nine puppies. We were not going to breed a kennel.

As soon as the puppies grew up, they were collected in a large box and taken to the market on the market day. In a small town, many people need a dog, and Mukha's puppies have always been luxurious - plump, strong, with well-groomed fur and cheerfully protruding ears. They were usually distributed within an hour. Moreover, they certainly gave five or ten rubles for each, no matter how we refused. Our people honor traditional superstitions such as: you can’t take a dog just like that, you need to pay at least something, otherwise it won’t take root. So this Mukhin "flaw" did not particularly burden our lives. But once one puppy we still "hung". Well, for some reason they didn’t take him, although outwardly he was absolutely no different from his more successful sisters and brothers. A week later, there was no buyer again for the puppy. Then there was another market day, and again no one took it ... But dogs grow very quickly. From a funny fur ball, the puppy has already turned into a long-legged dog, clumsy and unsympathetic, like all teenagers. I looked at it and realized that it no longer makes sense to wear it to the market. True, there was one more option left: to plant it on someone on the sly, as they threw Mukha to us. But here the result was too uncertain: the foundling could simply be kicked out into the street, or relentlessly put on a chain, arranging for him a truly “dog life”.
That's when I prayed for "the welfare of the dog." I don’t remember the exact words anymore, but in meaning it was something like: “Lord, help me put this poor fellow in good family to be loved and not offended there. Otherwise, no one takes it, and I don’t know what to do with it.”
I prayed in such a ridiculous way and went to the city on business. Returned a couple of hours later, sat down to dinner. I tell my wife:

Maybe one more time we will try to take the puppy to the market? Is it a little...

And she answered:

So they took him away. Have the kids told you yet?

It turns out that immediately after I left, a car drove up to the house. Behind the wheel - unknown guy. My son Gleb and his friend Igor get out of the car. The son asks his wife:

Mom, can I go to the village with Igor and Oleg for an hour?

The wife, of course, asks who this Oleg is and why he needs to go somewhere with him.

Oleg, mom, this is Igor's friend. His daughter has a birthday. And he and his wife decided to give her a dog. They have already been offered a puppy in Murachevka. Only Oleg does not like that there is a girl. Well, can I go back and forth with them?

You say you don't like that girl? Come on, I need to talk to him.

Five minutes later, our puppy was already driving with Gleb in the car to his new owners. When Gleb returned, his enthusiasm knew no bounds:

Mom, well, there in general ... Everyone squeaks just from pleasure. A bedding was immediately built for him in the room, a chicken leg from the refrigerator ... And our dog is business-like: he slowly walked around the rooms, sniffed everything, then started playing with a slipper ... My wife and daughter really liked it. In general, he will live as a master.

Gleb visited Oleg a couple of times, visited the puppy. He really lived as a master: they bought him various dog toys, fed him special dog food, bathed him, combed him out, periodically took him out by car to the forest - to run in nature. He grew up, got stronger, and looked like an absolutely happy dog.

Later I tried to find an explanation for myself - why God so quickly and literally fulfilled my ridiculous request for a "good family" for the dog. And, finally, I read a thought from Gregory of Nyssa, which, it seemed to me, well explains the meaning of what happened. According to the saint, the Lord answers such prayers, “... so that faith in God is affirmed in superficial people, and so that, knowing by experience how God heeds our prayers, by asking for unimportant things, we gradually rise over time to the desire for gifts of the highest and divine."

Well... Apparently, indeed, I am still a superficial person in the matter of faith. But the story of the miraculously built dog remained in my memory precisely as an experimental evidence of the effectiveness of prayer. Even one as weak and stupid as mine.
"Don't ask the king for manure..."

It is not accepted in the Orthodox tradition to ask God for earthly things. The Monk Isaac the Syrian speaks very categorically about this: “... If someone asks the king for a little manure, he will not only dishonor himself by the unimportance of his request, as he showed great foolishness, but also offend the king with his request. So does the one who, in his prayers to God, asks for earthly blessings.

But ... all the same, after all - we ask. Each about his own. Some are thoughtless. Life pressed others so that without God's help no longer breathe. And still others - in the simplicity of their souls, without thinking particularly about the appropriateness of such requests. Is it good?

I do not know. But I can assume that if a person has not matured in his spiritual development to prayers for humility, patience and love for one's neighbor, then it is better for him to have a prayer for some simple earthly needs than no prayer at all. After all, any appeal to God is already good for a person, because little by little it accustoms him to live in the presence of God. And without this consciousness, one cannot even speak of any spiritual growth.

And finally, a few consoling words of St. Luke (Voino-Yasenetsky), which he said not for ascetic hermits, but for ordinary laity, who, due to their weakness, nevertheless beg for “dung from the king”:

“Everything by which a person lives - all worries, all our sorrows and sufferings, our needs, even the smallest ones, - make up our spiritual life, because all our experiences, all our needs leave an imprint on the life of our spirit. And if so, then they are important in the eyes of God, for the goal of every person's life is to become pure, holy.

This means that everything that interferes with the life of the spirit, that darkens it, that distracts our spirit from the path of good, cannot be indifferent to God and the Angels. The Lord knows how important all our experiences, sufferings and needs are for us, and therefore He takes care of everything, for His love for people is immeasurable and boundless.

The Lord knows and keeps everything. He knows that our vital needs and our sorrows are very important in our spiritual life, therefore, none of our petty needs, none of our small sorrows can be indifferent to God.

Therefore, always ask God for everything you need, without being embarrassed by the thought that it is unworthy of Him to send up prayers for your daily needs. Like little children, stretch out your hands to God, always ask for everything without embarrassment, ask for what you need: with childish confidence, expecting help in everything that is not contrary to the will of God.