My oldest daughter Ellie loves to read. She enjoys novels, to be sure, but she also enjoys reading magazines and books that tell her lots of information. When she comes across a particularly interesting fact, she likes to come share it with me.
“Mommy!” she’ll say, arriving at my side with an eager smile. “Wanna hear about….” and she’ll fill in the blank with the subject of whatever neat tidbit she has just discovered.
I love that Ellie is so eager to share with me. I hope that continues into her teen years and even beyond, into her adult years. That’s because I love her, and I love connecting with her in a fun and interesting way.
I bet God loves connecting with us in a similar way. In fact, I know He does. God’s always ready and waiting to hear from us when we pray. The only problem is, most of us aren’t interested in sharing with Him very often. When something interesting happens in our lives, we share it with our family, our girlfriends, and the entire world (via Facebook), but we rarely talk to God about it.
You see, God doesn’t just want us to pray when we need something. Just as we wouldn’t like it if the only time our daughter spoke to us was when she wanted something, so God wants us to speak to Him on a regular basis, not just when we need Him to do something for us.
The Bible commands us to pray with all kinds of prayers and on all occasions. But do we really? Most of us confine our prayer life to “thank You for the food” and “please bless all these people on my list”. Do we ever come to God for other reasons? Not very often.
We could, if we wanted to, come to God for anything at all, and He’d love to listen to us. We could talk to Him about our day, about how disappointed we were when our favorite baseball team lost in the playoffs, or about a funny joke we heard. True, it’s not like God doesn’t know all those things already. But remember that the purpose behind talking to God is not to convey information to Him, as Ellie does with me sometimes. The purpose in talking to Him is simply to be in relationship with Him.
It’s hard to have an intimate relationship with someone you never talk to, or whom you talk to only when you have a request. It’s much easier to relate to someone you talk to about everyday things, hopes and dreams, triumphs and failures.
Why don’t we talk to God this way? Maybe we think He’s not interested. Oh, but He’s interested in anything we have to say, simply because we’re His daughters. Maybe we think we don’t have time, but we all have time to shoot up a quick prayer now and then throughout the day, telling Him about something or thanking Him for something.
Do you talk to God on a regular basis? I hope you do. Is your prayer life confined to a list of requests? If it is, you need to broaden your conversations with God and talk about other things as well. God wants to be your Friend, not just your genie in a bottle. And with such an amazing, incredible Friend as He ready to listen to anything you have to say, why wouldn’t you take every chance you have to talk to Him?
Ephesians 6:18—And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. (NIV)