Who Are You Talking To?

1st John 5:14 Now this is the confidence we have before Him: Whenever we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.

Prayer is something we talk about, something we tell others to do and something that we know we need to do and for some reason it is something we assume everyone knows how to do. We lead someone to Christ and we ask them if they are ready to pray to accept Him as if they should just know what praying is. When new Christians face challenges we tell them to pray about it but do we stop to tell them how to pray?

The truth is there is a lot going on when we pray, not the least of which is that we are entering into the presence of our almighty God. I want you to notice what the Bible says in 1st John 5:14:  ... Whenever we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.

Whoa! Stop the press - God hears us! Let that sink in for a moment. The amazing, wonderful God of the universe hears us when we pray!

Now I have never been asked to speak to a president or a ruler or anyone in authority anywhere but if I were, I would imagine that I would ponder what I was going to say and approach it in light of the weight my words would carry. That is if I am talking to a human leader. So why do I rush through my prayers with my heavenly Father? Why do I approach them haphazardly or, dare I say it, irresponsibly? Is it perhaps because I do not understand Who I am talking to?

Now don’t get me wrong, your prayers do not have to be planned out and God does not grade our prayers by our eloquence or formality. However that does not mean we should take these divine conversations lightly.

Prayer, so simple that a small child can do it beautifully, is so profound as to at times boggle our mind. It is when we join in prayer that the Holy Trinity allow us to join Him in intimate conversation. God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all involved in our prayer. We pray to God the Father through God the Son with the help of God the Holy Spirit. It is through our prayers that we Hear Him and He transforms us.

Why would the sovereign God of the universe listen to you or to me? We can not possibly tell Him anything He doesn't already know or point out a solution He did not see. It’s simple. He listens because He wants to; because He loves us. There is nothing we can add to or take away from God and yet He has decided in his sovereignty to use our prayers as the tool by which He works.

He not only listens to us but God gives more weight and respect to our prayers than we often do! Think about that for a moment - God who does not need our prayers considers them more important than we who could not do anything without them!

Do we truly understand who we are praying to?

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