Prayer

Lately I have been thinking about how awesome prayer is.

Think about it:

Prayer is talking directly to God. God who is the Creator of all things, the Saviour of the world, an awesome and powerful and majestic and enormous God. He is the eternal, unchanging, omniscient God. Who suffered and died and rose again again for us. Who is perfect, holy and just.
And the One who, in spite of our complaining, forgetting, turning away, sinning, and sinning again, loves us SO much.

And this God wants to talk to us! He wants us minuscule, insignificant people with all of our sometimes ridiculous requests to share them with Him. How amazing is that?!? He actually enjoys listening to us ramble on about all these comparatively small things. And He responds! Not only does He let us talk to Him, but He wants us to talk to Him and then, on top of that, He responds! And then we sometimes complain that He didn't do what we wanted, how we wanted it! How can we be so foolish?

And then--this is what really bothers me about myself-- we have the audacity to start thinking about other things while talking to God! Really! We are talking to the All-powerful God of the universe... and we get distracted? How can we do that? If we were talking to a friend, we would hardly do that. But when we talk to God... it's different, somehow.

So my challenge to myself has been to do this:

Before I pray or at the beginning of my prayer, I think about the incredible privilege it is to come before our Great God and Father in heaven and imagine Him listening to me attentively. That helps me to appreciate the power of prayer and the value of prayer more and it also helps me to be more focused in my prayers.

Also, today and yesterday I have been using a list of things to pray about. That helps me to stay on track and also remember everything I would like to pray for. :)