Prayer

Most of us probably don’t consider how we pray. At ACC we’ve been looking at various aspects of the Lord’s Prayer found in Matthew 6, where Jesus reveals to us the heart of prayer. And there’s been some interesting details that have come to my attention during the study, but the overarching thought of how my prayers affect my view of God has struck me most.
And what I mean is that when I pray a certain way, especially my prayer requests, I approach God with a certain expectation. I’ve decided that many of my prayers are infantile prayers. I simply ask him to give me what I want, like a baby crying out when she is hungry or tired and can’t do anything but cry out in earnest for whatever her need may be. The baby doesn’t give anything back to the parent, it just relies on instinct to let the parent know what is going on. And, like I said, many of my prayers are that way. I just cry out and ask or demand for God to give me what I want.
And I think we need to do that at times. I mean, the Psalms are filled with people crying out to God like a baby cries out for his mother or father. There’s power in that honest and open prayer going to God and just like a parent wants to soothe and provide for that baby, God wants to give us what we need, too.
But if that’s the only type of prayers we give to God, then our relationship with God is only as good as a baby’s is with his parents. And as wonderful as babies are, no parent honestly wants their child to remain a baby forever (and if you do chances are you haven’t had an infant for some time). But we all desire for our children to mature and grow and develop into kids and then teens and also adults that we can actually have a healthier relationship with, right?
And God wants our prayers to grow, too. He wants to relate to us in more ways than just as a baby or child crying out to his father. And though we’ll never have an equal relationship with God, we can have a more adult relationship with him but our prayers need to mature more and more, too.
And so I challenge you this week to consider where your prayer life is at. And part of that is frequency and length, but a bigger part might be how we communicate with him. Are our prayers just a list of requests or demands of him? Do we thank him for who he is and what he’s done? Are we praying to more and more align our will with his? I pray that we are. God bless.