Conversations With God

Conversations with God

Keep on praying. Romans 12:12

My husband calls me when I’m out of town, and we share what has happened during our day. I call my adult children and their spouses to check in, and I save my grandkids’ sweet messages on my cell phone. My sisters and I call each other to make plans for lunch or to empathize if we have a problem. No one has to tell me it’s my duty to call these precious ones, and no one has to remind them to call me. We connect because we love and care about each other.

It’s the same way with us and God. Prayer is all about relationship; it’s how we know God instead of just know about him and what others think about him. God’s aim is for us to have fellowship with him, a person who truly exists. Prayer is the language of his realm (just as French is the language of France and Chinese is the language of China). He invites us personally to call on him; we don’t have to e-mail our prayers to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. We don’t need a hotline through an intermediary person. Through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Father has made a way for us to connect directly with him, and he promises to hear and answer us twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, throughout all the years of our journeys on earth. When we think of prayer in terms of a love relationship—our love for God and his love for us—prayer becomes less of a duty and more a privilege. It becomes something we look forward to, not something we’re obligated to squeeze into our already packed schedules.

Would you join me in thanking God for drawing us to himself and for inviting us to have fellowship with him through prayer? —CHERI

Dear Father, what a great gift you have given us in prayer. May we love you more each day and be in conversation with you so much that it becomes as natural as breathing.

The Spirit of prayer makes us so intimate with God that we scarcely pass through an experience before we speak to Him about it, either in supplication, in sighing, in pouring out our woes before him, in fervent requests, or in thanksgiving and adoration. —OLE HALLESBY (1879–1961), NORWEGIAN THEOLOGIAN AND TEACHER