Someone once told me that God gives us children to parallel our relationship with Him and I believe it now; especially regarding our prayer life. God speaks to us and we ignore Him. He tells us in the Word that He requires us to grow (1 Peter 2:2) and to desire the milk of His Word. How can we pray effectively if we do not know His promises; if we do not read His Word?
My 24 month old son has a one track mind sometimes. I want him to listen to me but he wants to run around and pick up items that could be dangerous or climbs the outside of the banister about half-way up my staircase. I catch him and tell him that it is dangerous and say, let’s play with these blocks instead but he thinks he is having so much fun and this thing he is doing for the moment brings him so much happiness, then I take him down. He starts a tantrum screaming kicking and rolling on the floor and I am trying to calm him down to explain that hanging off the banister can cause him much harm, but he keeps screaming and throwing a fit. He does not want to listen to me. I keep trying to explain but the only things he can hear are his own screams. Then I let myself get angry at him, because he jumps up and tries to keep climbing up the banister, so I pull him down and yell back to him, “You know better, you’re old enough to know the rules, so you’re going to get a spanking & time out if you do it again!” So he proceeds to get a spanking. I am furious now and put him in time out. Then he cries and calms down and cries for me to come get him and forgive him, give him a big hug and love him. Now he wants to listen.
Listening is a huge part of prayer, [2 ears 1 mouth :)] and I am embarrassed to admit that the listening part of my life was nonexistent in the beginning because I did not even crack open my Bible for about the 1st year of being a believer.
This must be how God feels about us! He is screaming at us, telling us to get down from the banister (stop worrying, you are old enough now that you should have read that in your bible by now Phil 4:4-9 & Matthew 6:25) and play with those blocks instead (read His Word so you do not have to worry). He is trying to talk to us; and people make the strangest comments to us out of nowhere that we do not even notice God is screaming at us through them because we are not paying attention to Him or reading His Word to know that is Him, or ignoring Him! We continue doing that one thing that is causing us to not listen to God or grow in our relationship with him, we won’t make time for him or include Him in our day in our worries and fears, He is dying to give us the answer and then He must get angry and at us and would love to be able to grab us and throw us in time out. Instead I can imagine He is saying, “You’ve been a believer for this long now…You are old enough now, it’s time to grow up and know where to find the answer, it’s in the Word, stop worrying, it’s in the word about no worrying, how about walk by faith not by sight?” Then we mess it up and we look back and think, “Ohhhhh, that was you trying to guide me, I should have listened to you God”. Realize that we did not listen, and now we just want to do the right thing and search for His voice for His will.
Like when Malachi has calmed down he says “I ‘torry’ mommy”. I always feel this love and forgiveness toward him like I wish I did not have to punish him.
On September 8th, I will post a prayer Challenge on Hearing God's Voice. About 2 years ago during the summer, Interface Prayer Ministry took a prayer survey and one of the questions we asked was:
What would you like to learn about when it comes to Prayer?
I have posted the results here (of about 50 participants) to show that the #1 thing people want to know more about when it comes to prayer is....
| | |
| How to listen to God's voice/listening/responses | 8 |
| Types of prayer | 2 |
| All there is | 2 |
| How prayer works | 2 |
| Sermons | 2 |
| In general | 1 |
| Why people don't do it more | 1 |
| Use of scripture | 1 |
| Praying in the offense | 1 |
| How to pray | 1 |
| Building my faith | 1 |
| Not begging/repeating | 1 |
| How to practice types of prayer | 1 |
| Understand the answers to prayers | 1 |
| Different ways to pray and involve others | 1 |
| Interceding | 1 |
| To be Humble and to listen | 1 |
| Patience, open heart and mind | 1 |
| To pray without ceasing | 1 |
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