Prayer - The art of falling in love

Prayer is such a funny thing. Throughout my life I have watched people be passionate, swaying and give many words on one spectrum and solemn, still, and monotone on the other. I always believed the one that was most passionate were more spiritual. Boy was I ever wrong.

I still love the passionate and love being passionate. And nor do I think that the solemn man has it figured out either. Here's what I have discovered: Prayer is being in love.

Matt 6 tells us that babbling is no way of being heard by God. Nor is standing on street corners for people to hear your "righteous" prayers.

I also used to believe that you got what you wanted when you prayed. Jesus did teach that after all, didn't he? There are several times in the Gospel of John where Jesus says "I will give you whatever you want if you have faith" (my paraphrase John 14-16). Honestly, I still struggle with unanswered prayer. But I always have to come back to the reason we pray: Why do we pray anyway?

The answer is easy: Because we are in love. If we look at those passages in John a bit closer and add that with Matt 6, we see that surrounding them are passages that say things like this: "If you remain in me and my words remain in you whatever you ask I will give to you" (John 15:7). The purpose of prayer is not to use God to get what I want, but to fall in love with him to pray what he wants. "Your kingdom come. Your will be done." Our hearts become God's heart.

Why do you think we pray "in Jesus' name?" We are praying in the authority and power of Jesus' life, death and resurrection. He has given us that authority and we are now Christ's ambassadors, carrying his Spirit and his authority (2 Cor 5:20). When we pray in Jesus' name, we surrender our feeble will and take up the powerful will of God. When we pray in Jesus' name we begin to see what it looks like for His kingdom to come and His will to be done.

That's why we pray.