Prayer is Exciting For God
Earlier this week I said that prayer is expected, and I hope that this didn’t sound as if God expects some sort of mindless obedience from us.
God expecting makes Him sound like a tyrant. It sounds like He is just being a mean and egotistical old man, demanding that we do what he wants.
But that’s not it at all! God created us with a need for Him and it’s only when that need for Him is being fulfilled through a relationship with Him that we find peace.
Real Commitment
I don’t know about you friends, but I don’t want to be one of those who just “plays church”. Who comes and does all the churchy things, but never really prays and never really worships. I want to be one whose life matches the person I seem to be here church, and this means prayer. This means being in such a close relationship with God that I pray!!!
I want to share a longish passage from Andrew Murray’s book With Christ in the School of Prayer.
Christians often complain that private prayer is not what it should be. They feel weak and sinful; the heart is cold and dark; it is as if they have so little to pray for, and in that little, they have no faith or joy. They are discouraged and kept from prayer by the thought that they cannot come to the Father as they should or as they wish. Child of God, listen to your Teacher (Jesus). He tells you that when you go to private prayer, your first thought must be: The Father who is in secret; the Father waits for me there. If your heart is cold and prayerless, you even more urgently must go into the presence of the loving Father… Do not think of how little you have to bring to God but of how much He wants to give to you. Just place yourself before Him and look up into His face; think of His love – His wonderful, tender, pitying love. Just tell Him how sinful and cold and dark everything is. The Father’s loving heart will give light and warmth to yours. Oh, do what Jesus says: Just shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. Isn’t it wonderful to be able to go alone to God, the infinite God, and then to look up and say, “My Father!”
Prayer is engaging with God. It’s realising God loves me, he wants me, he knows me, he is glad to have me here!
God Longs for Our Prayers
I suppose there’s nothing more disheartening than trying to have a conversation with somebody who you know doesn’t want to be having the conversation. And many of us approach God this way. We think He has better things to do. He’s looking at his watch the whole time we’re talking.
We need to get out of that. We need to go into our times of prayer looking to simply engage with the God who is our loving Father!
Friends, God expects us to pray, not because it makes us good little religious people, but because He loves us! And he longs for a close relationship with us!
Let’s be the children of God who sit down and eat with him. Who drink in His words in His book, who sing His praise every chance we get.
That’s prayer. And without that… there is no Christian life.
