That Is Why We Pray

 

There is a God out there.  That is why we pray.

In awe or despair, we can’t help but cry out, “Oh, God!”  We need Him.

And when it comes down to it, that is why we pray.  He is there, waiting for us to realize that.

By simply praying, we are changed.  We cannot help but be made new, one prayer, one cry of the heart, one word at a time.

When we pray, life begins to look very different.  We remain in the same place, but with a new heart.  Even in those really difficult, dark, scary places, through prayer, God empowers us to walk towards the light.  We walk through the darkness, but we need not dwell there.  He is bringing us to another dimension in Him.

God whispers for us to enter in.  The porch light is on, the door not just unlocked but wide open, the coffee already brewing.  In prayer, there are no tricks of the trade, no secret ways, no magic words to gain entrance or His favor. We already have His attention. We don’t need to earn anything, nor need to perform, nor to be perfect, but just to come to Him.

The point is not getting results or self-conceived outcomes, but our relationship with Him.  Answers to prayer are not intended to be trophies, nor idols, on our shelf.

Prayer is also not defined by lists with columns to check off answered and not answered.  God is always working and His responses cannot be contained by a simple yes and no, but spread so far over generations that we cannot exactly know who prayed, or who was moved to pray, perhaps hundreds of years ago wandering in their own wilderness.  Prayer is not bound by time as we know it, but released into eternity.  We pray not knowing how, nor where, nor who will be impacted by it.

There is a God not just out there, but right here. 

“Draw near to me, hear this:  From the beginning I have not spoken in secret, from the time it came to be I have been there.”  Isaiah 48. 16

That is why we pray.

We are seen. We are heard. We are loved.

God wants us not just to grasp that, nor just believe that, but to practice that reality.

For an assignment, I have spent the past fifty-two weeks searching and researching prayer, and posting about it.  I do not now just view prayer differently, but I am praying differently.

I did not learn something more about prayer, but God changing me.  I have not come to the end of that. 

I never will.