Everyone has a different definition or understanding of prayer. Growing up, the most common one was “prayer is communication between man and God.” Another common one was “it’s a way of making our requests known to God.” Both are valid definitions for prayer. However, I have come to believe that prayer is about much more than that. Prayer is a major foundation of our relationship with God.
Over the years, I have consistently heard many people focus on the request part of prayer. We have become engrossed with the idea of making requests to God. The act of prayer has become like rubbing a lamp for a genie to appear and grant wishes. I hate to break this to you but God is not a genie! He is not just going to magically appear, grant you three wishes and disappear. God wants so much more than that from us. He wants relationship!
Imagine yourself in a relationship (friendship, marriage, romantic relationship) with another person and all they do is to constantly come to you when they need something. They don’t bother to spend anytime with you to get to know you, how you think, what you like, etc. That’s a one-sided relationship and such relationships do not last. Prayer is intimate relationship with God. It is not just talking to God or God talking to us, that is a one-way conversation. It’s an intimate relationship, one that goes both ways.
Prayer is an intimate relationship with God. When no one is talking or listening, there’s no real relationship.
Communication usually involves speaking and listening and prayer is no different. We need to begin to think of prayer as our path to intimacy with God. When we come to God in prayer, we should have a mindset of relationship and not a constant badgering of requests.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with making your requests known to God, from Philippians 4:6, we see that He actually wants us to! However, there is everything wrong with making that our priority of focusing solely on that aspect of prayer.
Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.
It is time to demystify prayer and make it as simple as God intended it. Let’s begin to look at it as a conversation with someone we love, only difference here is that we can’t see God physically BUT that doesn’t mean He can’t hear us (1 John 5:15). He hears us and also speaks to us in return (John 10:27), that’s how healthy communication works!