What does prayer mean to you? Is it telling God what you want or need? Do you only pray when you have something important to say?
Prayer is how we connect with God. And we sometimes over-complicate it.
In one particularly hard season, I started journaling my prayers. I was brutally honest with God. I told Him the things that I didn’t tell anyone else. Those prayers helped me feel so close to God. I was honest with Him, and I processed my emotions with Him. And when I started out with something hard, I usually began to see the light and I journaled truth, even if it was hard to remember in that situation.
This impacted my life because I genuinely connected with God. Yes, I was going through hard things. But I turned to Him in my pain. Some of the sweetest prayer times I have are when I pour out my heart to God.
I tell Him my hopes and dreams. He knows about my highs and my lows. When I am honest with Him, it makes life so much easier to handle. It doesn’t make trials go away, but it gives me the strength to get through them. And remembering what God has done for me makes me more grateful.
How often do you talk to God? I know that I do not have the kind of deep conversations that I want as often as I should. Sometimes we treat prayer like something on our to-do list, or a 911 call. But God is not an obligation or someone we should only turn to in an emergency.
God is the Creator of the universe. He made us for a genuine relationship with Him. We were created to connect with Him. We are not made to talk to God once a week or only at mealtimes.
God wants us to know Him. He wants us to talk to Him. He wants to hear from us. You can tell him all the little details. You can confess the secrets that you haven’t told anyone else. He already knows. He wants you to talk to Him about them.
But since He already knows, what is the point? Consider this: if your friend was involved in something that made the news, would you still want to hear what happened from their perspective? I hope you do! You probably want to hear what they were feeling or thinking, and you want to know how it affected them.
It is similar with God. Yes, He knows, but He still wants to hear from us. That is how we build a relationship. If you never talk to someone, you are not going to have a strong relationship with them.
God loves us. He wants us to tell Him how we are feeling. He is interested in the small details and the big events. Nothing is too small or too big to pray about. So pray about your life!
God is always ready to listen. He is never too busy or caught up in important conversation. He loves you. He is waiting for you.
