JUST PUDGE

One of the thing I love to do is teach! It’s not because I feel like I know everything (or even a little bit)! Rather it’s because I love to learn and share what God has taught me! That’s the beauty of teaching…its for the glory of God or its in vain!

One of the things out there that is SO VITAL to teach kids as they grow up is how to pray! Prayer is something that as soon as a kid can talk they should begin to learn how to do. However, I have a HUGE problem with “some” prayers that we teach kids! For example….

• “Now I lay me down to sleep…”
• “God is great, God is good…”
• And the list goes on and on…

Why do I loathe these types of prayers…because they aren’t prayers! They are ritual performances that we give in order to hopefully get “favor” from God.  That isn’t prayer!  Prayer is when we have a conversation with God! It’s having an intimate and personal talk with Jesus. Its just like we would talk to a friend (since Jesus is our friend) except its not your friend “Billy” or “Bonnie” its…the Son of Man (GOD himself)!

These prayers (like those listed above) aren’t talking to God…they are recited lines that we speak to God! Much like a ritual we would say out loud to God (probably boring Him to so many tears the earth floods again…twice)! Prayer isn’t meant to be boring or ritual or something where we “present our list” to God!
The simple fact that we would even look at prayer this way only proves that we view prayer as a “works based” activity that we perform to get our needs.  Rather it should be considered a time to hang out and talk to Christ; a time to grow in our relationship with Christ.

So, how do we know if our prayers or “ritual” or a conversation with Christ?  Great question!  I believe that these are some examples of the type of feelings we experience when we “don’t pray right:”

• If I don’t pray for mom & dad or my dog…God will strike them dead or they may get sick
• If I don’t pray for my aunt she won’t get better
• If I don’t say my same prayer every morning, before each meal, and when I go to bed God will smite me!

I am not trying to degrade prayer! I am trying to teach you what God is teaching me…HE DOESN’T WANT OUR DANG FLIGIN’ FLAGIN’ LIST-O-PRAYER! He wants us to talk to HIM, to listen to HIM, to spend some quality time behind closed doors with Him!

He knows our hearts and He knows what is laying so heavy on them…HE’S GOD for crying out loud! Sure, take some time to pray for people or certain things! But saying it over and over again isn’t what prayer is all about! For me its just like “prayer requests…”

I am picking at my own self here, but why in the world do we do “prayer requests?” I think that sometimes when we get done going around the room and taking/ giving prayer requests that God wants to reach out, smack us on the back of the head and say “hey Dufus, did you not know that I just heard all that…I was right here! Not to mention, I know your heart and everyone’s heart in here…I created your stinkin’ hearts!”

I know I may be poking a little fun here, but seriously, take my words with a grain of salt and just consider it for a second….

Going back to the kids and teaching prayer… My challenge and encouragement to everyone is this…teach them how to pray to God…the right way! Don’t let them feel the curse that so many of us feel where we find ourselves slipping into this “ritual” every time we go to pray! Teach them what it means to talk to Christ, how to talk to Christ, and why we talk to Christ!

This way, they can grow up with a better understanding and appreciation for prayer than we can imagine! So much so that they begin to pray like Christ did and not like some of us do now! It’s just a thought…? 

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 12th, 2007 at 7:28 am and is filed under LIVE. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.