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The Prayer God Loves

The Prayer God Loves


 
By Phil Callaway
 
October 2009
 
When I was a kid, my mother prayed for me every night. Sometimes I overheard her. She said, “Thank God he’s in bed!”

Most of us believe in prayer and most of us agree that God answers prayer. In fact, have you seen these GAP T-shirts people wear? You know what GAP stands for: God Answers Prayer. But can you imagine what would happen if God gave us everything we asked Him for?

Remember third grade?

Lord, I just really, really want Bobby to like me and to really, really want to marry me right now. Pulleeeze. I won’t ask You for anything else ever.

Fourth grade:

Lord, Bobby is such an egghead. I hate being married to him. All the other kids have their freedom and he’s so immature. He doesn’t help around the house. He leaves these messes. He won’t communicate or bring me flowers. And he makes rude noises with his armpits and speaks Pig Latin. Just make him go away.

Thankfully, God loves us too much to give us everything we ask for. His plan is so much better than ours. He knows we need patience. He has the perspective to know that we will one day thank Him for the way we have grown through life’s difficulties.

God must smile at times when He hears our prayers.

We say, “Dear God, my dog is sick … ”

And God, who is all-knowing, interrupts with a touch of sarcasm, “Really? You’re kidding, I didn’t know that. What’s your dog’s name again?”

We say, “Lord, if you heal my dog, I will serve you in deepest, darkest Africa.”

God says, “You’re not even serving me now, and how will you take the dog to Africa? Have you seen how much red tape you have to cut through to take an animal over there?”

We say, “OK, then, if you heal my dog, I’ll give up turnips and liver for Lent.”

If we talked to our friends like we pray to God, it would sound something like this: “Oh Martha, I was just really, really hoping, Martha, that you would be kind enough, dear Martha, to please bring me supper and hurry up about it.”

Scripture calls it vain repetition and we should really, really stop.

Here are a few honest prayers from children:

Dear God,
Thank you for my baby brother, but what I prayed for was a puppy.
Joyce

Dear God,
I bet it is very hard for you to love all the people in the world. There are only four people in our family and I can never do it.
Nan

Dear God,
My brothers told me about being born, but it doesn’t sound right. They are just kidding, aren’t they?
Marsha

Dear God,
Maybe Cain and Abel would not kill each other so much if they had their own rooms. It works with my brother.
Larry

Dear God,
I didn’t think orange went with purple until I saw the sunset you made on Tuesday. That was cool!
Eugene

I wonder sometimes if our prayers shouldn’t be a little more childlike. Filled with innocence and honesty and faith. Brimming with adoration and hope.

Prayer is not a rubber band. You don’t need to see how far you can stretch it. One night, after a particularly long day, my wife prayed, “Dear Lord, I’m tired but I love You. Good night.”

Sometimes the most profound prayer I can utter is “Help Lord, I need you bad!”

Prayer is more listening than talking. It is a moment-by-moment position of communing with the God who will never leave us, as surely as the snow never leaves the North Pole. The stunning mystery of prayer is this: that an all-knowing, all-powerful, loving God would stoop low enough to listen to my words and thoughts. That He desires to hear the voice of the likes of me. That sometimes prayer changes things, and always prayer changes us.

So perhaps we should humble ourselves and pray something simple and profound like the old author Norman Grubb once did, “Good morning, God, I love you! What are you up to today? I want to be a part of it.”




About the author:  Phil Callaway



 Phil Callaway