I try to do a lot of it in one form or another. I am not very good at it. So that said, I want to leave you with three images that may make it possible for you to approach a subject which, if you are like the majority of the human race, is just plain hard. And of course we church people often make it harder. We assume too that everyone knows what we're talking about.
Religious language is like any technical jargon.
It's a way of keeping outsiders out and insiders feeling that they know what they are talking about whether they do or not. Let's begin with simple definitions. Again, I don't think a sensible reader could read today's lesson and not know that Jesus urged his friends to think of prayer as asking. I do not read that he thought that specific answers were always granted, but he taught that in the process of asking or petitioning, something would happen. A secondary definition is that prayer is spiritual communion.