God Wants an Intimate Relationship With You.

Isn’t it exciting to have your precious grandchild come running into your arms with hugs and kisses? Your six-year-old granddaughter is calling to tell you she lost her first tooth and the tooth fairy is coming to her house, or your seven-year-old grandson is thrilled to tell you how many goals he made in his soccer game. Last Saturday, my two youngest granddaughters came over to visit, and we enjoyed making cookies together. Just as you want your relationships with your grandchildren to be intimate, God enjoys your relationship with Him. 

This month as we celebrated Valentine’s, we are reminded of our relationships, a time when friends express love to each other. However, it can also be an excellent reminder for us to show our love and appreciation to our heavenly Father for the privilege of having a personal relationship with Him, the Creator of the universe.

Prayer is about a relationship, our relationship with God, and those for whom we pray.

God gave us the gift of prayer to communicate with Him because He loves us and desires our communication. God does not want us to make our prayers a great production; He wants to have a personal, intimate conversation with us, speaking from our hearts, sharing our fears and struggles. 

Paul Miller writes in his book, The Praying Life, “American culture is probably the hardest place in the world to learn to pray, we are so busy that when we slow down to pray, we find it uncomfortable. We prize accomplishments, production. However, prayer is nothing but talking to God. It feels useless as if we are wasting time.” ^₁ Our heavenly Father rejoices when we take the time in our busy, hurried life to communicate with Him in prayer, expressing our love to Him, since relationships thrive on communication. 

The enemy, Satan, distracts us with our busy lives, hindering our walk with God by diverting our thoughts, making our prayers shallow, hurried, or rote.

We face a great deal of stress, difficulty, and disappointments in life, for which we need to be deliberate in setting a regular time to pray for our loved ones and ourselves, not just when we have a crisis. 

Our lives will be less stressful if we bring our needy hearts to God, asking Him to work out His plan in our lives and in the lives of our loved ones, instead of giving Him our plan. As we see our prayers answered, we will grow into a more intimate relationship with God and experience more boldness in our praying.   

♥    Do you sometimes feel like you are too busy to pray? 

♥    Are your prayers hurried or repetitious? 

♥    When you pray, do you find it hard to connect with God in our distracting world?

Prayer

Dear Father, I want an open, intimate relationship with You

so I feel comfortable bringing my needy heart to You.

I choose to make a daily appointment with You to pray intentionally

 for the souls of my children, grandchildren, and myself.

I will trust you that the seeds of prayer I sow today will bring forth a harvest 

of blessings in the days ahead. In Jesus’ name.

^₁ Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life, (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress 2009), 15.

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