Prayer: What I've Learned

The following are my thoughts about prayer after I challenged myself to focus on prayer for 30 days. I wrote this a couple years ago but have felt the need to share it again.

First, while I have long believed prayer was a way for us to communicate with God, I am beginning to think it is more than a means of talking.  To think of it like we are just picking up a telephone grossly underestimates prayer. 

Second, God is so overwhelmingly grand that, really, any thought of Him falls terribly short.  Nevertheless,  I truly believe that the Lord wants us to strive for Him.  Therefore, He has no issues with our puny thinking unless we never venture to learn more about Him.  Parents are excited with each new life stage of their baby.  So is God pleased with each step we take in understanding and obeying Him.

Third, the human race does not give God what He is due.  A few years ago, I heard a sermon that was about the universe and how great God is.  We are so insignificant compared to the expanse of the cosmos.  I once thought that God made it all for us to enjoy.  Now I believe that is all secondary.  What better way to show off how tremendously, overwhelmingly, stupendously great God is than to have a creation that completely blows you away.  Still, it is only a reflection of His greatness.  I remember during that sermon at one point I felt the awesomeness of God and, literally, felt so unworthy of ... God, His holiness, I'm not sure, but I felt I had to get up and leave the sermon. 

Contrary to what we deserve for our pride, God made a way for us to be with Him forever.  He wants a relationship with us.  However, due to His holiness and being all-everything He won't settle for us being half-assed in our relationship with Him.  I am sorry if anyone is offended by me saying that but I feel it needs to be said in strong terms.  God wants us to fight and struggle.  All of nature is survial of the fittest.  He wants us to wrestle with angels.  He wants the problems of life to be nothing compared to our fervor for Him.  Discouragement should not shake our faith, nor silence our prayers.  It is not in our own strength that we wrestle, nor by our own strength that we prevail. It is by strength derived from heaven. 

Jesus used a parable about prayer that illustrates God as a friend inside His house when we knock on the door with a need.  Since it is late at night and everyone is already in bed the friend tells us to go away.  That doesn't sound like the God we learn about but since Jesus' disciples wanted to be taught how to pray, Jesus must have felt it important to let us know this vital fact.  God honors those who are persistent and won't give up until God blesses them.  We are to ask until it is given.  We are to seek until we find.  We are to knock until He answers. 

Last, since God is all powerful, all knowing and everything else that He is, I'm starting to believe that our persistence honors Him.  When I think about the days when kings, pharaohs, and Caesars ruled the earth, people prostrated themselves before the king.  They had to make grand gestures to the king to be noticed and to pacify his wrath.  You could say God is narcissistic to want to be worshipped but since He really IS all that and a bag of chips, He does deserve all that we can give and more.  Jesus gave us a clue to our relationship with God.  Prayer.  Prayer is one way that we honor and glorify God.  When we persist in our praying, we show God that this is not a one sided relationship.  We take it seriously and consider it and Him the most important things in our lives.