I promised to say more, so here it is! Let's deal with why we pray first. You can view prayer as a chance to be in God's presence. It is intentional face time with God. It begins with us choosing to come into His presence and making ourselves available. But why? To pray is to speak to God - as it says in the bible itself "Speak to God as you would a friend" (Exodus 33:11). I would add that you can speak to God as you would your very best friend. Telling Him the unedited version of your life! In doing this I find that prayer very often brings peace to me although there are times when God like a true friend, gently challenges me with the truth. I find that I do a fair amount of telling God stuff, some asking, some praising God and then there is Listening.
Starting off in prayer can be the biggest challenge for us. Yet God always wants to hear from us. The danger is that we decide to wait until we can make our prayers fully formed and in doing this consequently hold back until we think we can be elequonent. The reality is that we have to start somewhere and that somewhere can be very faltering. I remember years back in the 1970s going to a weekly prayer group and being encouraged by the leader to pray out loud. For weeks at a time all I could manage was one sentence here and there. But I began to realise that God was just as accepting of my one sentence prayers as those of the others.
To praise God is to tell him how great he is. If we look at the psalms we can see the praise language developing in a prayer context, we hear the psalmist say things like "the Lord is King, let the earth rejoice" or "blessed be the name of the Lord." Although we have heard those words many times out of habit or tradition it is good to remind ourselves that we say things like that for two reasons. The main being that it reminds us that of the two of us God is definitely greater. God is worthy to be praised because he is our creator, and he made the universe and all that is in it. The second reason for praising God is that he likes it! It's just a fact!
Why or how do we change? I think it is a combination of the Holy Spirit gradually acting on our lives and melting our hearts making them more compassionate and also through prayer and being in a relationship with Jesus we are gradually challenged to be a bit different in our outlook and behaviour.
How did prayer start? Throughout faith history, going back thousands of years in the bible there are many recorded times of prayer. For our Jewish and Christian ancestors it was just an accepted part of every day life and many of their prayers are written in the bible and can be helpful for us to read.
Here is an example of a prayer of blessing from a father to a child "May the Lord bless you and take care of you, May the Lord be kind and gracious to you: May the Lord look on you with favour and give you peace" GNT Numbers 6:2
Jesus prayed as part of the natural rhythm of his life and we need to be like that too. He would say to his disciples "come away with me to a quiet place" he gave us the "Our Father" and he promised us about prayer that "where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them."
I call you forward into prayer and into relationship with God. May he bless you today as you read this and may his spirit gently infuse your soul with the peace of Christ and his love. When I started writing this there was really heavy rain. I stumbled across a passage which seemed to be like a word from God showing me his sense of humour but also teaching me something. "May my instruction soak in like the rain, and my discourse permeate like the dew, Like a downpour upon the grass, like a shower upon the crops. For I will sing the Lord’s renown."
May the Lord be in our hearts and in our love today. Help us to step forward O Lord in prayer. Free us to praise you and listen to you. You are worthy to be praised. Amen
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