Throughout our lives we make relationships starting with family all the way to friends. We learn to trust and love and care for people. However, while we spend whole lives perfecting and exploring our relationships with people, we neglect the one that was created with sacrifice, unconditional love and solely for our benefit.
The Google definition for prayer is as follows – a solemn request for help or expression of thanks.Gratitude and thankfulness are the most deeply felt emotions. Gratitude for the things you have and for knowing God can change one’s perspective on life. We convey our gratitude, love, worries and sorrows through prayer. Prayer is often mistaken for a ritual or a ceremonial monotone activity that one must complete in order to appease God, when in reality it is a manner by which we vent our feelings and worries and happiness. Every emotion under the sun can be communicated to God through prayer, for he is the one who created all things and no other could fully grasp the extent of them like he would.
If we want to draw near to God and build a normal relationship with God, the most crucial step is to quiet ourselves before God and pray to Him with a concentrated heart. Because we will encounter all kinds of people outside, matters and things every day that often disturb and occupy our hearts, and quite often our prayers just cling to rules and are just spoken as a formality without really meaning any of it.
We could be talking to God all the time, not just before bed and in the morning. When we drive to work or go to school, when we’re cooking in the kitchen and we’re taking a shower. All the time is as good a time as any to be talking to our father and creator. Just as we would tell a close friend about the details and the minor things in our life, and maybe even more, we can always talk to God.
Just as prayer is how we communicate with God, the word of God – the Bible – is how God talks to us. The Bible truly has all the answers if we only read and listen with patience and an open heart. We may not always like things in the bible but the truth does not alter itself to our liking, it is eternal and never changing. Meditating and understanding his word and viewing it from different perspectives is always the way to go when listening for God’s advice to us.
Sometimes when we feel the most burdened is when a certain verse speaks to us, a miracle, a comforting and uplifting hand from God. It’s also good to know that the burden and the weight we feel from the pressures of life is not always a bad thing. It’s important to sharpen the burden, the pain and worry, it keeps us grounded and closer to God. In comfort is where sin thrives.
John 15 verses 15 to 17 say: No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you. You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you. These things I command you, that you love one another.
Just as we would share good news with our friends and partake in their joys, we can share the joy we have found in Christ and the friendship we have with him. It is certainly possible to be respectful about other people’s beliefs while sharing our own. Nevertheless, even then we may be rejected and treated outcasts because of our friendship with God. In John 15:18 – 20 it says, “If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecute Me, they will also persecute you. If they keep My word,
they will keep yours also.”
Like any friendship or relationship, there may be hurdles and obstacles. There may be times of doubt when your faith in God is tested. That is when you will taste the true goodness of God, because while worldly friendships may fail you, God never will, even when you don’t see the purpose he has for you. God will never give up on you or reject you, he will always await your companionship and love while showering you with his. It’s up to us to receive it.