The greatest privilege God has given to His people, at least for me, is prayer, a chance to talk to Him!

Just think about it!

When we pray, we get to talk to the Creator of the Universe. Do you know that? When we kneel down and pray saying, “Our Heavenly Father, Hallowed be Your name” (means, may Your name be honored or exalted), we are literally saying those words to God the Father.

But if we knee down and pray just so we check off an item number that says “Pray today” from our daily chores list, we waste our time and energy. People who haven’t prayed that day are better than us. Do you know why?

Listen what the Bible says:

“And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” Hebrews 11:6NIV

So, when we pray for the sake of praying, to free our guilt-ridden conscience, we totally waste our time and energy and in a way, we are mocking the name of God.

When we are conscious of His presence, knowing that He is listening to us and He is actively in the process of answering our prayers, we forget asking Him anything, rather we start crying because we are so happy to be at His presence.

David sings a song saying

“You will make known to me the path of life;
In Your presence is fullness of joy;
In Your right hand there are pleasures forever.” Psalm 16:11NASB

My! My! My!

This dark world always gives us alternative ways to get to this pleasure and fullness of joy without bothering anything about God, doesn’t it? And ALWAYS we come back with disappointments. But we get deceived again, don’t we?

Oh, how we “groan” to be free from this sin-stricken body!

Sometimes or most of the time, we win the battle and start enjoying God’s presence test this amazing pleasure that this world knows nothing about. Then we forget our prayer requests and we just get lost in His presence.

I wish that was my daily experience. I am sure you would say the same thing if you are a genuine follower of Jesus Christ. There are so many things we fight against, our flesh, this dark world and the devil. These three work together to keep us from being alone with our Savior. And sometimes, we really don’t want to pray but we know for sure that if we don’t, our day will be miserable. So, we kneel down and mumble our usual prayers “Stop the war in Ethiopia. Bless Ethiopia! Bless all Ethiopians! Keep us safe! Bless China, Russia, Ukraine and US too.”

You know what this is called? It is called “Sleep talking,” not prayer.

Sometimes we pull ourselves together to pray and we take out our prayer book and start from number one and finish at number seventeen. Then we close our prayer in the name of Jesus and off we go!

Just imagine yourself as a parent for a second. You go to work, you come at the end of the day being exhausted but excited to be with your children. The moment you open the door, your kids come and say, “Do you have something for us?” If you say “yes,” they will take it from your hand and they disappear. If you say “No,” they still disappear from you. What does that make you feel like? Do you feel like you’re loved and treasured by your children?

No!

Rather, you feel like your children like your gifts, not you.

So to teach your kids how they need to love you, their parent, provider, more than the things you give them, you stop bringing anything home but yourself. And, when you do that, your children lose interest to even see you.

Does that sound familiar?

Yes because we all have done to our Heavenly Father!

God, give me this and give me that! Thank You and Bye for now! Amen!

But God wants us to desire Him. He wants us to make Him our only God! He wants us to make Him the only One who takes our breath away. When we do that, everything we need will be at our finger tips.

Listen:

“Take delight in the Lord,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.” Psalm 37:4NIV

Did you hear that?

So, it is wise for us to always ask ourselves this question: “What is the delight of my heart?” If our delight is not just to be at the presence of God, we’re following after something else than God and we get hurt. That is why God wants us to delight in Him alone. Anything that tries to take our attention and affection away from God is nothing but an idol. ///