Your Magnificent Interaction with God (my wings are made of faith)

Prayer is: Rejoicing ~ Worshiping ~ Conversing ~ Singing ~ Asking
~ Releasing ~ Responding ~ Planning ~ Smiling ~ Learning ~ Sharing ~ Thanking ~
Loving….and so much more.

I started a list that could have so many more words added to the total. I challenge readers to add at least one word that prayer is to you and what you believe you are doing when you pray. Bet you can’t find just one. LOL Please share with us in the comment box, but tuck a card in your prayer list notebook, or Bible as well.

But here is another list worth considering about words that describe what prayer is: Intimate ~ Assuring ~ Backed up by the Spirit* ~ Encouraged by the Savoir ~ Taught by the ancients ~ Sung in the Psalms ~ A path from darkness ~ A cure for vanity ~ A constant connection ~ Entrance to the throne room ~ A loving Father’s lap…etc.

I deliberately left some of the most obvious words or phrases from the lists, but encourage someone reading to add the first things that come to your mind. Also, prayer is often relative to what we are going through in our life. How we pray, and for what, changes with time, and it should. What blesses me most about prayer may not be where you find your solace and joy. But I encourage you to take a few moments each day when you pray to keep a running list, and add a new dimension to your attitude and understanding about prayer. Perhaps it will expand how, when or why you pray. This will in turn invigor your expectations, hopes, and the desires of your heart – all of which are important to God.

The first list is about what you are engaged in when you are praying. How are you relating to him in your conversation? The second list, however, is about the process or the place and the expected results - voiced as a description of how we come away from prayer. Think of these as points in time which were entrances to or exits from various situations in life. It is about the places that remind us of safety, growth, and help. It is about what comes to your mind that describes how you feel when you come into the presence of God. Like feeling better
after calling a good friend or loved one to talk about what life is throwing your way. It can also be about the truths we believe, concerning the expected results of our prayers.

When I looked at prayer this week, in this way, I came away with at least two new aspects about my personal prayer life. They concern how God wants me to grow. I will keep them personal to my heart, but I believe anyone who looks at the rut they may be in when they pray will benefit from a fresh approach to prayer. Adding a word or phrase to the list will help anyone examine their own situation quickly and simply.

Finally, I came away with a renewed recognition that no matter how far I go with prayer, it isn’t about how I pray that gets my prayers answered. How I pray is about what I come to know about God through our conversations. But praying with understanding has a value that supersedes how we actually do it. What is there to understand? That it is the Spirit who intercedes in our prayer, becoming our means of communication, which makes anyway we pray the right way to pray. But it doesn’t benefit us to not grow from the experience.

For the Lord will not forsake his people for his great name’s sake; for it has pleased the Lord to make you his people. Moreover as for me, God forbid that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you, but I will teach you the good and right way. I Samuel 12: 22 -23.

*Likewise the Spirit also helps our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. And he that searches the hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because he makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God. Romans 8: 26-27.

For if I pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit prays, but my understanding is unfruitful. What is it then? I will pray in the spirit and I will pray with understanding also. I Corinthians 14: 14-15

Conclusion? Prayer is first the magnificent interaction that goes beyond a mere conversation with God in ways we can’t even understand. But it is also a means of God searching our hearts and minds in order to know how to expand our understanding as he provides in every way everything we need. Therefore it is unique to any other thing we do in life. There is no other experience so endowed with God’s presence other than the Salvation experience of accepting the Spirit of God. It is salvation that gives him permission to perform this great act in our inner man, when we pray. And also permission to take to the Father the essence of our deepest needs, wants, desires, and hope, fears, joys…it is an act of intimate love. I hope today you will begin to see the preciousness of prayer in a way you have never seen it before. Then may you continue to grow, is my prayer for you.

Lord, make your divinity known to those who open their hearts to prayer with a new attitude to understand its power and purpose in their lives. Give new understanding and growth, so these may pray with power and expectaition. In Jesus’s name, AMEN