Prayer

I am reading and listening to N.T. Wright a lot in my personal study time and today's devotional relies heavily on his writing.

Sometimes we treat prayer like we’re bothering God, like our problems are too small or too selfish to bring to Him. But Jesus teaches the opposite. God is our Father. He isn’t a distant boss or an annoyed dictator. Good fathers want their children to talk to them honestly about what they need, what they’re feeling, and what’s going on in their lives.

That doesn’t mean we should pray for selfish things just to make ourselves look better or feel more important. But a lot of us actually have the opposite problem: we don’t ask God enough. We hold back, thinking He’s too busy for us. Yet even with all the pain and chaos in the world, God still cares deeply about our daily needs too.

Do you remember when you were smaller and you would ask your parents for something? Sometimes you received it and sometimes you didn't. You did not understand why you didn't get that thing, maybe you were too young for it, maybe it was too dangerous for you, maybe your parent's had something better in mine. In the same way, prayer is mysterious. Sometimes God says yes, sometimes no, and sometimes we don’t understand why. But prayer isn’t pointless. God invites us to be part of what He’s doing in the world, and somehow prayer matters in that process. So Jesus says to ask, seek, and knock, trusting that God won’t let us down.

When we really understand God’s love as our Father, it changes the way we treat people too. Jesus sums it all up with the Golden Rule: treat others the way you want to be treated. When we know God’s love personally, we can reflect that same love to the people around us.