How does prayer fit in to loving God?

Random thought here, “What happens when you have an argument with yourself about prayer?”  In my case God steps in and says, “Hey, (ok so this is my paraphrased interpretation) what is it you have been studying?  Hasn’t it been to love me with ALL your heart, mind, and soul?  Prayer is a key point in this relationship.”  Talk about conviction.  You see I have never been a prayer warrior.  For that matter, prayer has always taken second place to studying God’s word in my life.  Don’t get me wrong, prayer plays a role in the study of the Word, but the prayer I am talking about is sitting down and simply praying.

If I am a Christ follower then I need to spend time now only learning about God, but I need to spend time with God.  You see loving God fully is about our relationship with Him.  Psalm one tells us that the key to being a righteous person is in meditating on God’s word, but we also must spend time with God.  It is not an either/or rather it is a both/and. 

Prayer has at least two components, attitude and action.  Our attitude can be modeled after Paul’s statement in 1 Thessalonians where we are told to “pray continually.”  It is about our attitude.  In the same section we are told to “be joyful always” and to “give thanks in all circumstances.”  You see it is about our attitude, giving all to God, loving God fully, loving God with all our heart, mind, and soul.  In a similar way, the action of praying is physically removing our self from the world around us to develop our relationship with God.  This is what Jesus did.  Numerous times in the gospel stories we see Jesus withdrawing to pray, to spend time with his father. 

So how is your prayer life?  We are not all called to be prayer warriors, but we are all called to love God fully.  Another measure of this is taking a look at our prayer life.  Do you have an attitude of praying continually?  Do you take time regularly to withdraw and spend time in prayer?  To love God with all our heart, mind, and soul we need to spend time with Him in prayer.

Posted by strscoa on Fri, 7 Jul 2006 08:28
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