Prayer Begins With God

Has prayer become a chore for you?  Consider what Alvin Vandergriend says in Love to Pray.

“For years I believed that my prayers started with me.  I had to think them up.  I had to get God’s attention.  Not surprisingly, with this frame of mind, prayer was often a chore.          I learned that I was wrong. Prayer doesn’t start with us.  Prayer starts with God. That’s the radical idea that changed my prayer life.  God is the initiator.  He moves us to pray.  He gives us prayer ideas.  He holds out the promises we claim in prayer.  When we pray, we are God’s instruments.

God is at work in all our praying.  He makes his will known to us so that we will ask for the very things he longs to give us.  Out of love he burdens us to pray for others so that, in response to our intercession, he can pour out blessings on them…

If prayer starts with God, then the first order of business as we learn to pray is to learn to listen to God’s whispers, to tune our hearts to him, to respond to his promptings.  Perhaps the first prayer of each day should be “Lord, teach me to pray.  Help me to understand your purposes, to feel your burdens, to see what you see, to hear the groans you hear, so that my prayers may be pleasing to you and may accomplish your purposes.”

What is God impressing upon you to pray today?  Have you asked Him? Have you taken time to listen?

Let’s ask, listen, and then pray this week.

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