After watching The War Room and being apart of a church, who is currently and, in fact, has always devoted themselves to prayer, I have began to explore what prayer means to me. As I sit to write, I struggle to find the words to explain what prayer means to me. The only thing I can come up with is that it is our intimate connection to God. Prayer is intimate because it is simply between the person and God. We can stand amongst a million people and pray out loud, but the prayer should be between the person praying and God himself. It allows us to connect with God and focus on Him exclusively.
Our connection with God, our prayer, is a gift He has given us that opens us up to an intimate relationship with Him. Jesus’ death sealed the deal for us to have an intimate friendship with Him. Think about your closest friendship. Someone you tell everything to. You go to them if you ever need anything. You want them to experience your joy, and you want them to be proud of you. This relationship is exactly what kind of relationship God wants to have with us.
We should be praying our deepest secrets to Him. Confessing them. After all, He already knows them. Ask Him to provide your needs. He knows them. If you pray in belief that you will receive what you are asking for, He will provide them. Albeit, it may not be exactly the way you want them, but He will provide!
Our God is a loving Father. If you are like me, and did not grow up with a loving father, this is hard to even imagine. However, I, personally, can think of examples from my friendships that had the most loving father’s I could ever think of. And even though I can see their example, I know my God loves me even more than the idea of human love I have created in my head!
We learn from a young age to honor our fathers (well most of us! HA!). We honor them because we love them and respect them. We want them to be proud of us. And we should do the same for God as well. He is even more holy than our earthly fathers. Our father expects us to love him and love others as he teaches us to do, and our Heavenly Father is no different; He expects these things from us too! But I would say He calls us to an even higher level than our earthly father expects. God calls us to love even when it hurts and even when we do not want to. I know people out there who struggle with their relationship with God because their relationship with their father was not good. They do not understand a father’s love, so it is hard to trust God. But God calls us to trust Him even when it is hard. He calls us to love other people when we would rather hate them because they have hurt us or whatever other reason we may have.
The Bible constantly tells us to pray, but we need to learn how to be captivated by prayer. We need to be attracted to it. We need to see the beauty in prayer. We need to delight in the relationship prayer allows us to have with God. I challenge you to discover what prayer means to you and challenge that idea against what the Bible tells us prayer should be like. Always have God on the forefront of your brain and pray without ceasing. Pray radically. Pray as if you know every prayer you ever mutter will be answered in the fullest of God’s glory. Pray.
Follow the Dyers 