Theology Thursday: Prayer (In Your Personal Life)

There is a line of a song I have been listening to a lot lately, mainly because Sophie loves it, with a line that I just cannot shake from my mind. It says, "I will search and stop at nothing, You're just not that hard to find."

This is such an incredibly challenging line to me, and especially as it relates to our prayer lives. For some reason, many of us have in our minds that the will of GOD is a difficult thing to understand and to find. We treat our relationship with Him almost like a puzzle to be solved or an equation where we need to know the value of "x." We have gotten in our heads that GOD is hiding, just waiting to be found.

These things are not true.

Bad things happen, GOD says "no", we are required to work for things, and sometimes life seems really unfair.

GOD does not hide His presence from us. Think about it:

1. How could someone is is omni-present...Literally everywhere, hide from us?

2. Why would someone who loves us want to remove Himself from us?

3. What circumstances would make it appropriate for Him to leave us alone?

The problem is not, and never will be GOD. Ask Seek and Knock (Matthew 7), if we ask anything according to His will he hears us (1 John 5), Jesus' prayer (John 17), praying in all circumstances, etc. These are all verses that tell us that GOD is listening, He is there, and He responds.

Show me a revival, and I will show you a house of prayer.

Show me a man/woman after GOD's heart, and I will show you a person of prayer.

Show me a successful evangelist, and I will show you someone in the backroom praying every time they speak.

Show me someone who is confident in their relationship with GOD to the point that they can do anything and I will show you someone who spends time on their knees daily in the presence of GOD.

Show me a church devoid of the Spirit, a person who cannot "find" GOD, a family who is uncertain of GOD, or a person who is so deep into the rut of everyday life that they cannot change their schedule long enough to see GOD, and I will show you a church, a family, and a person who has forgotten what it means to fall on their face in humility and prayer. 

This is not a puzzle. It is not a confusing process where you have to do a lot of things in a certain way just to find GOD. GOD is literally right there...always. His omniscience, omni-presence, and omnipotence are in our midst...

Sadly, if you are like me, I have a tendency to instead rely on myself. I have infinite love, mercy, power, grace, and every other good thing on my side, and I choose the opposite of prayer...I choose me.

My challenge for myself, for you, for our churches, and for anything else we are involved in...Bathe it in prayer. Make prayer a central part of your life, your church's life, and your family's life. Stop choosing sad, evil, pitiful, pathetic you and start choosing GOD!