First I'll "re-begin" with the thought from my first post:
In a church basement on Halloween night just over 40 years ago, I must have said "yes" to the Lord Jesus. "Must have" because I have no recollection of what I said, or even of what the person sitting across from me had said to help bring me to this decision. But that's OK. What God heard was "yes," and He knew it was sincere.
The real Christian life, as I've begun to understand more fully, is Christ's life. In me. The "exchanged life." He's the only one who can live the Christian life. I'm not very good at explanations like this, so perhaps the video below will help.
But what really transformed my life was simply beginning to praise God, even when it was the last thing I felt like doing. Through it He taught me, among other things, that prayer isn't an exercise we do to convince Him to do things. It's not even making a list of all the needs everyone in your church has, and making sure you pray through the checklist every day. As I said on the main page, prayer is a love song, and it's meant to become a duet. God aches to have an intimate, "everything" relationship with us. Praise lets Him know we revere Him, but also that we want to know Him. And praise is at the core of the sort of prayer that could be called a love song.
One last thought, a bit corny, but it came to me recently that "prayer" could spell out
Praise. Repent. Ask. Yield. Exalt. Rejoice.
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Video: The Life Of Christ Within Us, Part 3 (Charles Price)