Isn’t it exciting to have your precious grandchild come running into your arms with hugs and kisses? The six-year-old granddaughter calling to tell you she lost her first tooth and the tooth fairy is coming to her houses or your seven-year-old grandson thrilled to tell you how many goals he made in his soccer game.

Just so, our heavenly Father rejoices when we take the time in our busy hurried life to communicate with Him in prayer. Our communication with Him is our expression of love to Him.

This month we will be celebrating Valentine’s Day, which is a time when friends express love to each other. It can also be a great reminder for us to express our love to our heavenly Father.

Prayer is about relationships, our relationship with God and those for whom we pray.  Jesus tells his disciples in John 14 and 15, “If you love me, you will obey me. . . . If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you . . . I have told you this so that my joy will be in you and that your joy will be complete.”

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

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. But prayer is nothing but talking to God. It feels useless, as if we are wasting time.”?

• Are your prayers hurried or repetitious?

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

Satan distracts us with our busy lives. He doesn’t want us to take the time to pray for our children and grandchildren or ourselves. He wants to hinder our walk with the God by distracting 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 spend time in prayer.  However, we need to be deliberate in setting a regular time to pray for our loved ones and ourselves, not just when you feel like it.

We will have a calmer heart, less stress and pressure if we bring our needy hearts to God asking Him to work out His agenda in our life or in the lives of our loved ones, instead of trying to figure out our own agenda. As we see our prayers answered, we will grow into a more intimate relationship with God and experience more boldness in our praying.

Our Enemy, Satan is trying to steal our faith, along with our children and grandchildren. Satan knows a family’s faith can be lost in one generation; however, we as parents and grandparents can be defenders of their faith in Jesus Christ by praying for them.

Our children and grandchildren do not inherit our salvation. Nevertheless, we can pray that when they are presented with an opportunity their hearts will be prepared to step into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Dear Father, I choose to make a daily appointment with You to pray intentionally for the hearts of my children, grandchildren, and myself. I want to have an open intimate relationship with You so I feel comfortable bringing my needy heart to You. I am going to trust you that the seeds of prayer I sow today will bring forth a harvest of blessings in the days ahead.  In Jesus Name.