Intimate prayer with our Father is an act of worship. We are setting ourselves apart from the world’s distractions to listen to what He has to say to us. In the book of Romans, the apostle Paul tells us that we need to “present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Rom 12:1). Andrew Davis notes that “Without this, none of our service will be done with the right heart attitude, and will thus not be acceptable as ‘spiritual worship.”[1] While our conversations with God in prayer should be as intimate as close friends, we also must enter into the prayer with the right heart and mind. We are to live our lives to bring Glory to God, and our prayer time also needs to reflect that. When we come to the Lord in prayer, our desire is to humble ourselves before Him and seek His guidance, presenting ourselves to be ready to follow His will.

We need a healthy prayer life, allowing God to speak to us through His Word, through promptings of the Holy Spirit, and through fellow Christians. We need to speak back to Him in prayer. Davis notes, “The conversation is the essence of the spiritual journey of sanctification.”[2] The more we strive to listen to and become like Christ, the more holy we become. Without a solid prayer life with the Lord, we cannot expect to grow to be more like Him. Many times in my life, I felt that I had all the answers on my own. However, when I stopped listening to my plans and started listening to God, He revealed an entirely new design for my life, which led me to Grace Seminary.            

My wife and I have grown in many ways on our faith journey recently. We spend time in prayer together and separately, are part of an amazing small group, and are actively involved in the growth of a local start-up church. My study partner once warned me to be careful about what I pray for, that I just might get an unexpected answer. We chuckled about this, but the reality that God will answer was driven home recently. My wife and I had been praying for direction for the next phase of our lives. We are empty nesters now, and with humble hearts went to the Lord in prayer, asking for advice. The difference in this prayer was that we were both open and willing to surrender to his plan.

Until next week,

Pastor Michael

You can find more posts on the PSC website: Pure Springs Blog Posts – Pure Springs Church

[1] Andrew M. Davis, An Infinite Journey: Growing toward Christlikeness (Greenville, SC: Ambassador International, 2014), 297.

[2] Ibid., 351.