Irresisitible Invitation by Maxie Dunham - Day 26
Irresistible Invitation: Responding to the Extravagant Heart of God
Day 26: Communion Through Conversation
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,
Your kingdom come, your will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
Matt. 6:9-10
Prayer: our communion with God; our opening our hearts and cares to one who cares more than life itself. If you’ve been on the receiving end of a multitude of prayers, you may have sensed the power it brings. If you’ve been on the end of your desperate, heartfelt prayers not seeming to be answered, you may have felt a sense of futility about prayer. If you’ve had miraculous prayers answered, then you may have felt that awkwardness – the desire to claim the miracle and the uncertainty of how to say so in front of those who haven’t found the miracle they prayed for.
As Maxie says in today’s devotion: “To be sure, there is mystery. Not all people for whom we pray are healed. What we need to claim is simply this: redemptive and wholeness-giving things happen when we pray that do not happen if we don’t pray.”
When we view prayer as a mandatory discipline, a requirement to “check-in” with God, we have lost that sense of awe and wonder, that understanding that prayer is our chance to commune – regularly – with the divine. The one who created us and all that is.
Maxie reminds us that we need to remember that Christian prayer is not about “telling God what to do.” Rather, it’s about sharing our needs, making our desires known. And then it’s about surrender. After we share our desires, we leave it up to the wisdom of God to decide what needs to be done. We let go of our will and rely wholly on the will of God. Just because 21st century medicine and technology doesn’t always save our loved ones from struggle or death doesn’t mean we stop using it. “Shouldn’t it be the same for prayer?” We pray because it we amazingly can. We pray because we can “actually talk with God” and because God hears, listens and responds to what we have to say.
Don’t miss the enormity of this. The God of the universe is ready to commune with you, to communicate with you. Like a shepherd who misses even one lost sheep; like a homemaker who sweeps the house for one lost coin – “Your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should be lost” (Matthew 18:14).
“Take a few minutes right now to think about that. God cares for each one of us as individuals. Is it hard for you to accept that? Do you believe it? Have you been praying as though you believe it?”
Remember the parable about the person who goes to the house of a friend at midnight and asks for bread. Here the ending of this parable: “I tell you, though he will not get up and give him the bread because he is his friend, yet because of the man’s boldness he will get up and give him as much as he needs” (Luke 11:7-8).
We are to be bold, we are to be persistent, we are to know that we can call on God at any time. Jesus wraps up the story in Luke with these words: “So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened” (Luke 11:9-10).
We must remember that prayer is a privilege and not a duty. “We are free to pray. The privilege is open to all of us. The privilege is communion with God, feeling God’s presence, and being aware of God’s guidance.” We need to always remember that “prayer is relationship. It is being with God. It is meeting. It is a personal relationship in which you and God move from a hello of politeness to an embrace of love. It is communion. All other dimensions of prayer must take second place to this.”
And “relationship becomes meaningful and real the moment you being to single out a person from the crowd. Prayer becomes real when it is no longer a relationship in the third person but in the first and second persons, when God becomes more than the remote “Almighty,” and becomes the singular and unique ‘Thou’ or ‘You.’”
“When we discover a personal relationship with God, prayer goes beyond being a shop where we go to bargain and barter for the gifts of God. It becomes the home of the Father with whom we live, where all the treasures of God’s love and concern are ours for the receiving.”
The Heart of the Matter
- How would you describe your prayer life?
- Describe a time that God directly answered a prayer. How did that make you feel?
- What steps could you take to make your prayer times even more personal and relevant to your life?
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