Prayer

We talk about prayer all the time in church and Christian circles. Sadly, I think sometimes we offer to pray for people as a form of gossip... finding out something that others don’t know. However, if we know the information, we can pray specifically, but we still can’t tell God how He has to do things. We don’t need to know the details to lift someone up into the throne room of God. We just have to lift them up because God knows what needs to be done. We also have to be cautious about what we promise. If someone shares a struggle or a surgery that is coming up, it is easy to say that we will remember them in prayer... but do we? As Christians, we need to be more than words. We need to live out our faith and keep our promises. I read recently that, “The shortest distance between a problem and a solution is the distance between your knees and the floor.” That is where prayer needs to be. Maybe we can’t physically get on our knees before God, but we can humble our hearts before Him. If we can get on our knees, our physical actions often encourage the heart, and thus our spiritual condition. Our natural reaction is to try to fix things on our own and then maybe we remember to pray. Some use prayer as a backup rather than the first line of action. I’m always reminded of the prayer meeting that was called for during a long drought. They gathered together to petition God for rain. In the crowd, only one person, a young boy, believed enough to bring an umbrella. That is the faith, the humble heart, the expectation that we should all have. Prayer is not an inconvenience or a chore we need to accomplish. It is the opportunity to interact with the God who created all things. If we were invited to visit with royalty, most of us would consider it a great honor and yet when we have been invited to come before Almighty God, suddenly we struggle. What does that say about our faith. I know that prayer can become so predictable that we sometimes pray without even thinking about it. This can be particularly true with table prayers. If we always pray the same thing, we might not think about it or we might try to pray quickly so that we can get back to watching TV or get to eating. Just remember that when problems arise, there is an obvious first step. With a humble heart, we need to pray. Father, help us to rely on You in all things. Help us in our struggles and enable us to help others in Your name. Amen