Prayer

  • Apr 27, 2008
  • Series: I Can Hear You Now

Prayer

  • Matt Payne
  • Nov 29, 2009
  • Series: FAITHWERKS

Prayer

Big Idea:  Prayer is about hearing from God rather than telling Him what we want Him to do.

What if someone came up to you and said “Would you teach me to pray?”  85-90% of people would say “Don’t ask me, ask so and so (some official spiritual person)” or they would say “It’s a very personal thing, everybody needs to pray in their own way” which is another way of saying “Don’t ask me.”

Prayer starts with God, not you.  Things were happening in Samuel’s life, and Eli was teaching him to respond to God.  We tend to think that prayer is US starting the conversation with God, that we are the initiators.  The story shows us that wasn’t the case for us, that God is speaking to us constantly.  Now obviously, it’s not like Samuel, where God comes and stands by his bed (or maybe it is and we just can’t see him or hear Him?  The story doesn’t say Samuel saw Him, only that he heard Him.)  But God is speaking to us.

Apply this to both my own prayer life and the prayer life of my kids if I have kids.  I need to learn and teach my children that prayer never truly starts with me.  I’m responding to what God is saying to me in my life. 

God is already speaking to each of us every day in a myriad of ways.  Prayer doesn’t start with us, it’s responding to God.  God starts the conversation, not us.  Prayer is not so much “what am I supposed to say?” or just saying what I have to say and then being done praying, it is thinking about and reflecting on what God has been saying to me and responding to that in what I say back.  That’s why Samuel is told to say to God “Speak Lord, your servant is listening.”

Prayer is more about listening than talking.  Prayer is more about doing what God wants me to do instead of telling God what I want him to do.

 

http://read.ly/e/ii