How does intimacy with God develop?.This is an important leading question because the last thing I want from prayer is a guilt trip—something I know I should do, try to do more, and end up feeling like I’ve checked off a box and waiting for my reward.
Prayer is relationship. Forging a prayer relationship is not about taking lists to God. It’s about taking ourselves to God. I believe there are three critical attitudes that we need to adopt if we want intimacy with God to grow through prayer.
1. Honesty
We can’t pretend to be where we’re not. Honesty with God is always our starting point. The more honest I am with God, the more honest He can be with me. It’s a scary exchange, not for the weak-hearted.
I can’t tell you how many times I have come to God upset about something. What I wanted was God’s agreement. What I usually got was God’s truth about my insecurity, my motives, my closed mind, my self-absorption. But He didn’t shove this in front of me to hurt or humiliate me. How did I know it was God? Because I would never have asked the questions He asked. He opened the door to a level of honesty with myself that I could not have accomplished on my own. Iintimacy with God brings me back to prayer over and over.
2. Humility
I refuse to come before God telling Him what He should do. I can ask what I want, even explain my perspective. However, In the stories I read in the Bible; it was God who always told His servants what to do, not the other way around.
Humility is an attitude that brings me to God as a servant waiting for instruction. Humility reminds me that God alone is totally competent, all-knowing, and completely saturated in perfect and pure love. Humility grows awe and wonder before God.
Honesty opens the door to intimacy; humility keeps it open.
3. Surrender
Here is where the battle for intimacy is won. When I come to God from the beginning, white flag ready to raise, I know there will be no battle at all. I may need a back-and-forth interchange before I can say, “Your way, your will; may it be to me as you have said.” But when I do, that is when I find my heart’s true home, a place where I have always belonged more completely than anywhere else. This intimate knowledge will bring me back to God quicker than any answer I could receive from Him.
Are you understanding how prayer is about relationship? How it begins with God inviting you before you ever think about going to Him? Prayer is not our spiritual vitamins; it’s our spiritual oxygen.
These three attitudes help us reclaim prayer as a garden walk with God . My heart needs that. Doesn’t yours?
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