"Before you know what to pray for and how to pray for it, you must become a particular kind of person...The scales must fall from your eyes and you must see clearly that no matter how great your earthly circumstances become, they can never bring you the lasting peace, happiness and consolation that are found in Christ. Unless you have that clearly in view, your prayers may go wrong...Unless at the very least we recognize this heart disorder and realize how much it distorts our lives, our prayers will be part of the problem, not an agent of healing...
...However, if we have made God our greatest love, and if knowing and pleasing him is our highest pleasure, it transforms both what and how we pray for a happy life."
-Timothy Keller, "Prayer"We've all struggled with what prayer is and how to do it. Can you count how many times you've brushed prayer off as being pointless? Or have you been hurt by giving into the idea of prayer, pouring your soul out to a God that's supposed to be loving, but doesn't answer in any intelligible way? Is prayer real? Or just a self-induced therapy session that's about as effective as baby aspirin on a torn ACL?
Reading this significantly helps me see the concept of prayer in a different way. Reading this make me feel like I've been starting at the wrong spot in my attempts to pray. It opens me up to seeing that perhaps it's not God's fault that I don't see any answers to my prayers, but that it's my own disordered and misaligned heart and being that prevent me from seeing God's love and action in my life.
Perhaps the next time you pray, don't start with telling God what you want to happen. Start by telling God who you are and who you hope he can help you become.
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