“And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.” Ephesians 6:18
After Paul has given each spiritual concept a weapon to help us understand that concept, he instructs us to keep praying. Communication is important in all relationships and our relationship with God is no different. If we are not talking with each other, misunderstandings happen, opportunities of closeness are lost and true intimacy of knowing each other can not be developed.
Prayer is simply a conversation with God. There should be respect for who God is but there also needs to be genuine interaction on our part. God doesn’t need flowery speech such as “thou, thy and thine ” in our prayers, He just wants us, our genuine self, talking with Him. He doesn’t require a certain amount of time either, just being there and willing to talk with Him is what He wants. He wants to be involved in our lives, He created us for that very reason, to interact with Him.
Some have said that you need to follow acronyms to know how to pray. If this is something you want to do, then that is ok, it is also ok if you don’t. There are plenty of them to choose from, but if you are looking for something to follow after, there is no better way to pray than the way that Jesus Himself taught His disciples. In Matthew 6:9-13, Jesus was talking with His disciples about how to be sincere in their prayers, making sure that the prayer is a true communication with the Father and not a show for those around them.
He talked with them about being alone when they pray and focusing only on God and then He taught them this prayer found in Matthew 6:9-13. Jesus said “This, then, is how you should pray: ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.'” NIV
In the end, it doesn’t matter if you follow an acronym or not. What matters is that you are talking with God, being sincere and genuine and then listening for what He may have to say back to you. When we pray, we tend to usually ask for something, something we feel we need or want.
My encouragement for each one of us, is that when we pray that we also make sure we are asking God to help those around us with what they are going through as well as ourselves. In our verse for the day, Paul said to pray for all of the Lord’s people. No conversation is always about getting something from someone else, there are also parts of the conversation that are about getting to know each other, gratitude for things that have been done for us and listening to the other one.
I encourage you today, as well as myself, to not pray a memorized prayer each time we pray. Instead to pray from the heart, seek to get to know God, to thank Him for what He has done in our lives and ask Him for guidance in life as we go through each day. To seek what we can do to help further His kingdom here on earth.
I believe there in no better conversation that we can have than the one we can have with our Heavenly Father especially when we are genuine, sincere and real with Him. After all, He already knows what is in our hearts, He simply wants to hear from us. I hope you have a great day and enjoy spending time in communication with our Heavenly Father.