“We love because he first loved us” 1 John 4:19
When the Holy Spirit started preparing us to hear God, it began a relationship. There is no doubt that God started the relationship, but it began with the desire for us to participate in it. Scripture shows us that the way we join with God is through prayer. Prayer is listening and talking with God so that we can understand Him and strengthen our relationship with Him.
Most of us don’t start our Christian lives by working out our faith for ourselves. Our growth is guided by others, by attending church, by reading books, and by fellowship. So, when we begin to study our bible seeking God, we carry all that guidance with us and look at God with those things sitting in the back of our minds. Most followers form their opinion of prayer by observing others and listening to how they pray. They may mimic their prayer pattern if they think it works for the person they are observing. When listening to others pray, we mostly hear them asking for something, so we can quickly get the impression that we only pray because we need it. The general approach seems to be to go to God in humility, ask for whatever we desire and instead of ending the request with abracadabra, we say “in Jesus’ name” or “Amen”. Then, we wait and possibly don’t pray until we need it again.
What do you talk about if you are in a relationship with someone? Is the only time you speak to them is when you want something? Are these the first words you greet them with: “can I have” or “could you”? Is that even a relationship?
God wants to reveal Himself and His truth to us personally, and He does this through prayer. It isn’t easy to be in a growth relationship, thinking that the sole purpose of the other is to meet our needs. Before we dare ask, we should know who we are asking. When we discover who God is, we will change what we ask for. James tells us we don’t get what we want because we ask with the wrong motives. He implies we don’t even know what we need, so we ask for things that impact us personally. Isn’t it time to change our relationship with God?
Why do we pray?
We pray to know God and His plans so that we can line up our lives to live in that plan. No matter what we pray, He will listen; how about we try listening to Him for the next little while? We can ask God for His grace to reveal Himself to us. We can pray, asking to understand Him. We can humbly ask Him to grow our relationship.