Learning How to Pray After Finding God, from the perspective of a born again Catholic

I would really like to be helpful to you about this, but I have a feeling you might not be open to anything I'd say. My perspective is completely Protestant and I'm very leery of anything Caholic, including Catholic prayers which are likely to be canned and completely irrelevant to a relationship with God. I'm sure some Catholics are saved but in that case I'd expect their orientation to be more like mine than in line with Catholic doctrine. It can happen but it would take some discussion to find out if that's the situation with you. This could certainly be an answer from God. I believe you but unfortunately there are other sources of such knowledge than God, and even true believers can be tripped up about that. Very good place to start. As it should and I very much hope it is God who is reaching out to you in this way. Sounds good.As for how to pray, Jesus gave us the Lord's Prayer as a template for that. Each line is a theme you can expand on according to your own understanding and feelings and needs. But in general praying is just addressing God as Lord or Lord God or Heavenly Father or something similar, saying something that indicates you want to be His servant/child/adorer, perhaps asking Him to show you what He wants from you, but not all prayers have to follow such a pattern. You can just start asking Him to help you with something, as if He's a friend who has the power and the desire to help you. Ordinary English, nothing programmed. "Dear Lord, please protect my family while they are driving through the mountains to visit me, in Jesus Name I pray Amen" is roughly how I prayed recently. (They happened to come through the mountains on the only day when it was clear and dry, among a series of days with heavy snow and ice and traffic accidents.Which reminds me of a similar situation some twenty-odd years ago when my daughter was driving alone through the same mountains but there was a black cloud over them that I could see from here that scared the wits out of me. This is the famous Donner Pass route where so many died a long time ago and it's still treacherous. I got down on the floor on my face and begged God to keep her from harm. Later she told me she was driving in blizzard conditions, couldn't see a thing, suddenly saw an exit sign and took it, ended up staying the rest of the night in a motel -- where she was finally able to call me (no cell phone back then). Expensive but better than running off the road in a blizzard)ABE: The prayers I've found I can count on God's answering are prayers for understanding, particularly understanding of something that isn't clear in His Word. This was pretty dramatically the case when I was a new believer and didn't have much knowledge of the Bible. Over and over I found He directed me to a Biblical answer to a question I had. He still does.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.