We can always learn to pray better, but don’t let that stop you from praying. God loves for His children to come to Him and talk.
Many people don’t fully understand what prayer is. They think of it as talking to God, and it is. We pray for this and we pray for that. We bring our concerns before Him, and we should. But if we stop there, we miss the deeper purpose of prayer.
Prayer is a place where we yield ourselves to Him. Prayer is not about convincing God to agree with us. It is not about trying to change God’s mind or to persuade Him to do what we think is best. Prayer is much more than presenting a list of requests. It is entering into a real relationship with the living God. Prayer is a back-and-forth dialogue where God speaks, leads, and reveals His heart to us. It is where we bring our hearts to Him and allow Him to shape and align them with His will.
With our Bibles open as we read, we hear from God, and as we pray, we speak to God! It’s awesome!
Jesus showed us this in His own prayer life. In the Garden of Gethsemane, facing the cross, He prayed,
Matthew 26:39 (NKJV) “He went a little farther and fell on His face, and prayed, saying, ‘O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.”
Jesus brought His request before the Father, but He surrendered Himself to the Father’s will. This is the heart of true prayer—aligning ourselves with what God desires.
Prayer is a place where God draws out what He has already placed within us. We see this in the life of Moses. God called Moses to lead His people out of Egypt, but there were moments when Moses wrestled with God in prayer, interceding for the people and pleading for mercy. Through those conversations, God was shaping Moses, drawing out the compassion and faith He had planted within him, and allowing it to grow.
It is a powerful and beautiful thing when prayer becomes more than us talking at God, and becomes a conversation where we listen, learn, and are changed. God desires to speak to you. He wants to reveal His heart to you. He wants to shape your desires, your hopes, and your perspective to align with His truth.
Jeremiah 33:3 (NKJV) “‘Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know.’”
God invites us to come to Him to listen, to receive, and to grow in our understanding of our Father’s love. Prayer is a place of revelation, where God reveals things to us that we would never see on our own.
It is easy to fall into the habit of using prayer only as a tool to get what we want or to try to fix the situations around us. But God invites us to something deeper. Prayer is where your heart comes into line with the heart of the Father. It is where you begin to desire what He desires and to see situations and people through His eyes.
When you come before God in prayer, take time to listen. Open your Bible and let His Word guide your conversation with Him. Ask Him to align your heart with His. Ask Him to help you desire what He desires and to give you wisdom for the situations you are facing.
Psalm 37:4 (NKJV) “Delight yourself also in the Lord, And He shall give you the desires of your heart.”
As we delight in Him and spend time in His presence, He shapes the desires of our hearts to match His will, and He fulfills those desires in His perfect timing.
God delights in us when we come to Him in prayer. We learn to love that time, too!
