Driving home from the store the other day, I was thinking to myself, how the year was ending, and I needed to start praying seriously again. As I was thinking that thought, the Holy Spirit reminded me that I should not stop praying and that prayer was not a thing to do but a lifestyle and habit. I realized in that moment that my thought process concerning prayer was wrong.

I tend to reduce the fervency of my prayers when things seem to be going okay and increase them when I feel something is about to happen. That way, I stop it and catch it in the act before it happens. That is a wrong approach to prayer. The Holy Spirit started to speak to me on what prayer really is. “It is a communication with your father, not a whiny, complaining discussion with Him.” If you say He is your Father, then why do you only talk to him when you are needing something. You push Him to the furthest part of your mind and only remember Him when you need something He can do for you. If you treated your friends and family that way, would you have anyone around you?”

I realized that, that was exactly what I had been doing this year. I spent so much time worrying about COVID, its effects on all areas of my life, and other things that I forgot to spend time and just talk to God. It’s like treating my husband as a piece of rag that is only being used when I remember I need him for something. I realize that we do that all the time. We treat prayer as something that is a production, we need to create the right environment and the right mood before we can pray; which is not the case though!

Prayer is a communication with the Lord. We can pick up the phone to call our friends and family to catch up, why can’t we do that with the Lord also? I Thess 5:17 says

“Never stop praying.”

I found this definition of prayer that I thought was great. It says, “Prayer is an invocation or act that seeks to activate a rapport with an object of worship through deliberate communication.” What got me was the “through deliberate communication”. Making a purposeful effort to increase my relationship by intentional communication.

When two people are dating, they always make the effort to spend more time together and do things together to get to know each other better. You spend so much time together talking on the phone about everything about the person, trying to know as much as possible. As Christians, in our relationship with God, we should adopt the “dating technique”. You remember the story of Daniel in the lion’s den. Decree or no decree, Daniel’s schedule was to pray three times a day. Because of this, he was sent to the lion’s den. As usual, God showed up for His own and He closed the mouth of the lions. David was another person who prayed all the time. There is no situation that David did not talk to God about.

Prayer is talking with and getting to know God more. It is a two-way communication model; so, you need to wait for God’s response. The more you speak, the more He speaks to you. If prayer is communicating, then you know God will also talk to you too. You ask questions, He responds, He asks you questions, you respond, slowly you begin to get closer and closer to Him. To be considered a God’s friend you need to have a relationship first with Him. To do that, you need to talk to Him. What is the fastest way to get to know a person? Communicating. You talk to communicate, you talk to connect, you talk to learn something new

“The Sovereign LORD never does anything without revealing His plan to His servants, the prophets.” Amos 3:7.

I want to be the kind of friend that God reveals things to before they happen. I want to be so close to Him that He gives me His opinion before I make a decision.

As I write this, I think about people who God was close to that He revealed things to, I just remembered Jonah. We talk about Jonah’s disobedience and being in the belly of the fish and all that; but did you consider that Jonah and God were on great terms to where God spoke to him to go talk to the people of Nineveh and Jonah knew God so well that he knew that if the people repented, God would forgive them. How many of us know God to that extent? How many want to have such a close relationship? Gideon went back and forth with God about his purpose and even set out tests for God to prove Himself. That is true friendship. David asked God if he should pursue the people who kidnapped his wife and children and God said: “yes, go ahead.” David chose God to punish him instead of man because he knew God on a deep level. Abram battered with God in the lives of the people in Sodom and Gomorrah. The Bible also said Abraham was sitting by a tree and God came and spoke to him. God boasted about Job to the devil; meaning that He and Job knew each other on a very deep level.

Do you know God the way Abraham, Gideon and David knew Him? Do you spend time conversing with Him about your day, your joys, hope and fears? My goal for the next few months is to spend quality time with God. Talk to Him as much as I talk to my best friend. I know that as the relationship blossoms, I will begin to have a greater understanding of who He is.