Some of us were fortunate as children to have a mom or a dad who would tuck us in at night after we said our prayers.  I recall kneeling by the side of my bed and asking God to watch over grandma and grandpa and my sisters and my mom and my dad and my friends and my dogs and my hamster and anyone else who came to mind.  As I got older, my prayer life changed drastically.  As my responsibilities increased in life, my prayers not only became fewer, but also became more about me and less about the people in my life.  From childhood to adolescence to adulthood, if I could chart it, I bet I would find a direct correlation between my growing independence and the decline in my reliance on God.

Over the last year or so, I have had a lot of conviction about how I pray and why I pray and getting back to a place of deeper dependence on God.  There have been a number of situations in which God has been challenging me to do three things: 1) pray for things of eternal value, 2) to pray in a manner consistent with His word and 3) to pray with pure motives and a clear conscience.  As I have literally prayed on how to pray and how to stay focused to pray in this manner, I have found myself having sidebars with God in the middle of prayer.  It’s actually kind of funny, sometimes after a sidebar in which the Judge has pointed out a violation of the three guidelines, I will then pray a “move to strike your Honor” and try it again or even omit it if I can’t pray it from a pure motive.

A quick example of prayer working.  There have been periods of my life when I have carried a deep burden for the lost, but this has really been heavy since my dad died last October.  I have had a burden for several folks in my life, including family members, to put their faith in Christ.  Sometimes it seems futile, but God is teaching me patience through this process and continues to remind me that “it is not His will that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.”  With that I have had some encouragement to keep going.  One of my family members is now going to a mid-week bible study and learning a lot.  This has sparked some great conversation between us that have never happened before.  Another word of encouragement came on Sunday night when one of my sisters shared with me that she learned her first bible verse, John 13:34.  She was very proud of herself and it is a great verse that we should all know along with verse 35.  To me it was validation that God is doing good things that I don’t know about and a little fuel for the fire to keep doing what I am doing.

I have more to share on prayer.  I will be posting on praying for others, on praying for yourself and spiritual warfare prayer.  Thanks for reading and I hope you found some encouragement here.