God Wants an Intimate Relationship with you.

Isn’t it exciting to have your precious grandchild come running into your arms with hugs and kisses? Your six-year-old granddaughter calling to tell you she lost her first tooth and the tooth fairy is coming to her house or your seven-year-old grandson thrilled to tell you how many goals he made in his soccer game. Last Saturday my two youngest granddaughters came over to visit and we enjoyed making cookies together. Just as grandparents enjoy their relationships with their grandchildren, God enjoys your relationship with Him.

This month as we celebrate Valentine’s we are reminded of our relationships, a time when friends express love to each other. However, it can also be a great reminder for us to express our love to our heavenly Father for the privilege of having a personal relationship with Him.

Prayer is about a relationship, our relationship with God, and those for whom we pray. God gave us the gift of prayer so we could communicate with Him because He loves us and desires our communication. God does not want us to make our prayers a great production; He wants us to have a personal, intimate conversation with him speaking from our hearts, sharing our fears and struggles.

We read in Psalms 5:3, “ . . . in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation.” I like to envision Jesus sitting at the right hand of God waiting for me to lay my requests at his feet.

Paul Miller writes in his book, The Praying Life, “American culture is probably the hardest place in the world to learn to pray, we are so busy that when we slow down to pray, we find it uncomfortable. We prize accomplishments, production. However, prayer is nothing but talking to God. It feels useless, as if we are wasting time.” ₁ Our heavenly Father rejoices when we take the time in our busy, hurried life to communicate with Him in prayer, expressing our love to Him, since relationships thrive on communication.

The enemy, Satan distracts us with our busy lives hindering our walk with God by distracting our thoughts, making our prayers shallow, hurried, or rote. We face a great deal of stress, difficulty, and disappointments in life for which we need to be deliberate in setting a regular time to pray for our loved ones and ourselves, not just when we have a crisis.

 Our lives will be less stressful if we bring our needy hearts to God asking Him to work out His agenda in our life and in the lives of our loved ones, instead of giving Him our agenda. As we see our prayers answered, we will grow into a more intimate relationship with God and experience more boldness in our praying.

• Do you sometimes feel like you are too busy to pray?
• Are your prayers hurried or repetitious?
• When you pray do you find it hard to connect with God in our distracting world?

Send your heavenly Father a Valentine telling him of your love for him by your obedience to him.

Prayer:  Dear Father, I want to have an open intimate relationship with You so I feel comfortable bringing my needy heart to You.

I choose to make a daily appointment with You to pray intentionally for the hearts of my children, grandchildren, and myself.

I am going to trust you that the seeds of prayer I sow today will bring forth a harvest of blessings in the days ahead. In Jesus Name.

 Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life, (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress 2009), 15. Used by Permission of NavPress, All Rights Reserved. www.navpress.com

By Lillian Penner, Co-Prayer Director, Christian Grandparenting Network, lpenner@christiangrandparenting.net