Hebrews 5:7 (NLT)
7 While Jesus was here on earth, he offered prayers and pleadings, with a loud cry and tears, to the one who could rescue him from death. And God heard his prayers because of his deep reverence for God.

You sometimes hear that people reject praying out loud in a group setting because of what Jesus said of the Pharisees, telling them that because of how they prayed in public, they had already received their reward on earth. And yet, we see in Hebrews, Jesus offered prayers out loud, even emotional prayers of pleading and tears.

So we see that it isn’t so much how the prayer is offered (out loud or silently), but the heart behind it that is important.

Heavenly Father, I pray that my words to You would be true and from the heart.  Don’t let me sugar coat my feelings, my longings and my thoughts.  May I give you an accurate reflection of my heart.  And may Your Holy Spirit use that honesty to change my heart, so that it only wants to please You as only Jesus could.  I pray this in Jesus name.  Amen.

Always praying for the glory of God,

I ran across a quote from a 19th Century Catholic priest who said, “Pray as you can, not as you can’t”. It reminded me of a couple of things.

First, because prayer is one of the things that God uses to change us, we can’t wait until we’ve got it right to pray. I listen to prayer warriors who can bring me to tears with their wonderful prayers and once thought that I couldn’t pray until I was able to do like that. However, God’s grace is absolutely sufficient to cover us in prayer. We can be sure that in this world, we will never be able to master prayer.

Second, we can’t wait until our motives are right, or we would never pray. We are a tangled mass of motives, both good and bad. It is much like children coming to their father with crazy requests. Fathers want to hear from their children, even if we don’t make sense all the time. Fathers are simply happy that their children come, mixed motives and all.

I can remember thinking that God wouldn’t want to hear from me because I might say something that had the wrong motive and because He is God, He would know it.

The prayers in scripture are mostly simple prayers – heartfelt and earnest, exposing deep desires. It is only when we do pray simply that God can begin to work in us. He wants to hear about our day, the things that encouraged us, the problems that hurt us, the family member that is lost, the disappointments that we feel, the longings to be closer to Him. C.S. Lewis once said, “lay before Him what is in us, not what ought to be in us.” Simple prayers should be genuine prayers – telling God like it is. Then as we listen to Him, he can comfort, counsel, encourage, and grow us.

As I learn each day how to communicate with the Father, I am encouraged by the faithfulness of those like you that simply want to share their hearts with God.

Always praying for the glory of God,