Prayer…communicating with God




I’m not sure God really needs to hear us speak. Possibly we are all far more eloquent at the level of a heart cry than by the time we put it into words. As many men have stated, prayer is what we do in our time…but God knows out heart all the time.

I think we often strive for such a regiment of prayer that it loses its spontaneity. Our prayers become planned and constructed rather than unleashed into the bosom of God. Our prayers should be a spiritual extension of our physical form where we are able to throw our arms around a loving Father, Friend, and Lord to confess what no one else need hear and offer praise that no one else deserves. With all intimacy and innocence and purity, like a babe in arms we cry and coo and cuddle; and yet with a oneness that makes all revelation as safe as the heart being honest with the mind and soul.

Do you know that relationship? Can you come before the throne with confidence?

Jesus said of praying that no one else need hear our prayers. Yet the first thing we want to do with a child or new Christian is put words in their mouths to pray; as though the words which we front them are more pleasing to God than the simple, heartfelt, ramblings of one who is still finding their voice.

The more they learn about Jesus the more they will understand “what a friend we have in Jesus”, whom they are talking to.

Last I knew “Please” and “Thank you” and “I’m sorry” went a long way in relationship restoration. It’s not that difficult. The day I recount as the beginning of my life in Christ, to His service, my prayer was simply a declaration of my desire - one line: “Lord, I want to serve you!”. His answer was acceptance of the sort that makes me able to understand what it means to have His Spirit bear witness to my spirit. (Romans 8:14,16)

The Lord’s Model Prayer as given in Matthew chapter six is a reminder of simplicity in approaching the Creator but I doubt it was intended to be repeated verbatim. Many Christians do not even know the implications of praying “…Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done…” and so should be simply praying their heart – what they do know and feel.

Even the shortest, simplest, prayer may be an acorn with an oak ready to break loose.

In the sermons of Joseph Parker which I find in the volumes titled “Studies in Texts”, this profound observation caught my eye:

“Who does not like to know what a child has said in prayer? To hear the sweet words is like hearing God’s answer to them; and if the child’s words be feeble, like young birds that cannot yet fly, their very feebleness has a strange might of its own which makes the heart quiver and brings tears to the eyes.”

This is what happens when we let the child pray their heart and the newly converted is free to cry.

Many have heard me stutter and stammer through a prayer scarcely able to string coherent words together. For me those words that do come to the surface are like flecks of gold mined from the depths of my soul. I have come to the conclusion that if I were eloquent in prayer I would be offering up prayers in front of all who would listen, and be quite proud of the accomplishment. As it is I offer up my passion with sweat and trembling and even fear that my words should be worthy of the one who I hoped to hear them.

How needed are our prayers? A point that should be made is that the love with which “…God so loved the world…” is Agape. To Agape is to give what is needed to the recipient of the passion. To know the unconditional Agape is to remove even the condition of “want” from the act of giving. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Begotten Son”. The world did not ask for the atonement, and for the most part does not comprehend its meaning and implications to this day. Most people ask for everything BUT the Son. But God gave because it was right to give and exactly what a fallen world needed.

So in the context of the Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus promises (Matthew 7:7-12) all who ask will receive, seekers will find, and those who knock will find an open door, it is not that God is giving what is desired but what is needed. If you “Seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness…” (Matthew 7:33), faith will tell you, you will receive exactly what you desire and need - His will in accordance with His righteousness.

It is amazing that each of us are able to come to Christ in prayer within the narrow purpose of our own heart and mind. Even more miraculous is that He reaches back and we know Him through the same porthole.

A loving Father knows how to give good things to His children, but the children do not always know how to ask for good things. …such are, too often, the prayers of man.