So what do I think pray is? There was a time, decades ago, when I thought it was a Christian duty and nothing more, like going to church on Sunday morning. That was about it. You are supposed to go to church and pray so I did. Period. My prayers were superficial, self centered and I’m sure never made it past the ceiling. I had a friend who was about 40 years old that I went to church with some years ago who said this is the way he thought of prayer. At first I was shocked then I was extremely sad for him because he had no idea how much life he was missing out on.
Today prayer is everything. Prayer is like breathing I would be dead if I did not pray or certainly would not have life as I know it now. As the Trisagion says He is the giver of life and one of the ways He gives it is through prayer. The best time of every day is my time of prayer in the morning. Prayer is really nothing in and of itself but it is a means to touch the living God. I used to think God was “out there” somewhere in the heavens far away but that is absolutely not true. He is here now as I write this and as you read it He is more real, more alive, more substantial and more solid to me than the chair I’m sitting in or the people around me. I am aware of Him and I know He is aware of me and this is all possible through prayer. So prayer is a means, a way, a way of life to life in Him that is more awesome than anything I could possibly have imagined and the best part is I feel like I have just started.
So what happened between my old view of prayer and my new one? A LOT! God gave me a glimpse of who He was, I turned my back on Him for some years and did my own thing, I hit a wall and He most graciously took me back, He showed me the idols in my life (that hurt), He exposed a lot of uncleanness and He showed me in a number of ways how near and powerful and loving he is. I knew how much I wanted Him but more than that I NEEDED Him and over time became willing to give up anything and everything to know Him. He brought some people into my life along the way at just the right time to guide me to the next step just as a loving Father would and I am still on the road.
So let me ask the next question or really two questions and be honest. Why do we pray? Why should we pray?
2 comments:
The following is my subjective, naive understanding of why we pray and why we should pray. This is only what I have either been told or have simply felt through my own limited experiences with prayer.
In my opinion, we pray to spend time with God. Prayer is a time of visitation with our Father, the one who made us and actually wants to hear everything about us, the good, the bad, the ugly. We may keep things and issues from our mortal parents, but we can hide nothing from Him, no matter how hard we try. I think we should pray to not only acknowledge that fact, but to hear His advice on the subjects that cause us the most pain, confusion, and frustration. God also wants to hear about the all the wonderful things in our lives, but again He already knows them and knows that these blessings came from Him. We pray to acknowledge this fact and be thankful for the gifts He gave us to allow our successes to happen.
I think many people pray because they are "supposed to", as you originally mentioned. This kind of prayer doesn't allow God to work in us and through us to create the kind of person He knows we can be.
Awesome comment Monique! I'll tell you something that blew me away a few years ago. I always took the big things to Him in prayer but at the time never thought about the little things. I had been working on a little woodworking project and had reached an impasse. I could not for the life of me figure out how to solve or get past this one problem. I thought about it for a couple of weeks and was coming up blank. Then one day I was driving down the road and I prayed out loud "Hey, Lord you were a carpenter how would you solve this?" and I had the answer instantly. I don't know why that struck me so hard but it did. I guess at the time I did not want to bother Him with the little things. Now I do! It was also hard for me to fathom at the time that the God of heaven and earth could or would care about the dinky little troubles of my life. I know now that He absolutely does care about the little things and it is very humbling and still hard to believe.
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