By His Grace

Prayer

For many years, I struggled with prayer. Whenever I would hear the words, “bow your head and close your eyes” my mind immediately began to wander. I’d be thinking about shopping lists and people I needed to call, anything but God. I’ve been taught that the quality of our prayer life determines the quality of our relationship with God. And based on my experience with prayer, I figured my relationship with God must by pretty weak.

 

In this I think I’m not alone. We want out prayers to be pure and holy, but we’re often distracted and selfish, dry and brittle, confused and empty, even hurt and angry. So what do we do? I think it’s necessary to re-examine what we think about prayer. It’s not a religious activity. Prayer is the natural flow of relationship. And it starts with God loving us. Richard Foster in his book “Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home” begins by telling a story.

 

One day a friend of mine was walking through a shopping mall with his two-year-old son. The child was in a particularly cantankerous mood, fussing and fuming. The frustrated father tried everything to quiet his son, but nothing seemed to help. The child simply would not obey. Then, under some special inspiration, the father scooped up his son and, holding him close to his chest, began singing an impromptu love song. None of the words rhymed. He sang off key. And yet, as best he could this father began sharing his heart. “I love you,” he sang. “I’m so glad you’re my boy. You make me happy. I like the way you laugh.” On that went from one store to the next. Quietly the father continued singing off key and making up words that did not rhyme. The child relaxed and became still, listening to this strange and wonderful song. Finally, they finished shopping and went to the car. As the father opened the door and prepared to buckle his son into the carseat, he child lifted his head and said simply, “Sing it to me again. Daddy! Sing it to me again!” Prayer is a little like that. With simplicity of heart we allow ourselves to be gathered up into the arms of the Father and let him sing his love song over us.

 

Any of us can be like that child who expressed the desires of his heart in response to his father’s love. In this way our prayers become a response to God’s grace and love. I think what I’ve been taught is backwards. It’s not our prayer life determining our relationship with God, but instead our relationship with God inspiring our prayers.

 

Got a couple more cool books!

What’s So Great About Christianity? by Dinesh D’Souza

This guy is a former White House domestic policy analyst and now works at Stanford University – he’s brilliant, but writes in a way you can understand. In this book he asks the questions “Is Christianity obsolete? Can an intelligent, educated person really believe in the Bible?” The result is a book that challenges the assumptions of both believers and doubters and affirms that there really is something great about Christianity. Randy and I couldn’t put the book down and gave them to our families as Christmas gifts.

Communicating for a Change by Andy Stanley

Here’s the hook from the dust jacket: “Great stories capture and hold an audience’s attention from start to finish. Why should it be any different when you stand up to speak?” And that’s what this book does! As it teaches you a strategy for giving captivating, practical talks, it holds your attention so that you don’t want to put it down until you reach the back cover. I’ve already started implementing what I learned and can see a huge difference in my ability to connect with the audience. It’s a great tool for anyone wanting to impact people’s lives though the power of communication.

Hope you enjoy them! I sure did.