Prayer is a quality of the heart
A prayer life begins with planning to pray. Like anything in our lives, if we don’t prioritize and schedule accordingly, the important things won’t get done. It is crucial that we understand that we pray because we’re helpless and can’t do life on our own. We pray because we need God. We needed God to save us from our sins and to rescue us from His wrath. In His love He has done this through Jesus! But our need for Him hasn’t evaporated now that we have eternal life. Because we are made alive in Jesus, we now draw our life, everything we need, from Him. Prayer is taking your heart and filling it up every day at the fountain of life - Jesus. This quality of the heart - dependency - is what drives prayer. Prayer is more than a quantity of the day, but not less than this. As we set time aside to pray, because God is important, then our hearts learn to pray continually throughout the day.
Our relationship with God changes prayer
Conversation is the means by which we give and receive from the heart. Friendships are begun in conversation, developed through conversation and sustained by conversation. Communication reflects the depth of a relationship, whether from the surface or from the depths. But underlying great friendships is more than great conversations. There is trust. The more you come to know and be known by an individual, the more you are willing to give. Prayer is conversation with God. But our communication with God is based on God first having communicated with us through sending His Son Jesus, who is called The Word. Everything God desired and desires to say to humanity He has said in Jesus: God is love. If we come to understand the relationship we have with God through Jesus Christ, prayer becomes a pouring out of our heart to Him. There’s nothing we won’t tell Him or ask of Him. The channel of communication God has opened up for us through the blood of Jesus on the cross is an unspeakable joy. It changes everything! Good friends don’t have awkward or forced conversations. There’s a freedom and flow to their conversations that is unique, and irreplaceable. How much more with our God?! That in Christ we have been chosen to ask anything of God as His children is an unchanging reality that should change the way we pray.
Prayer is making room for Jesus
Because planning to pray is a necessary component for a fervent prayer life, we should persevere when it becomes a struggle to set that time aside. Still, often we miss that scheduled time or we can’t take as much time as we’d like. This can be due to many things, but often it’s because prayer becomes a chore, a duty rather than a delight. I often will say to myself, “I need to make room for prayer.” But this is similar to making room to clean or to mow the lawn. I have tried instead to remember that I am making room for Jesus. He is a person and there is a difference between doing a job and meeting a person. Whether it’s five minutes or fifty, making room for Jesus is a joy that has no equal.
We pray because we need God, because we’re thankful for Jesus and because we know Him personally.
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