Pastor's Pondering
Read Lead Pastor Duane Mabee's weekly Pastor's Ponderings here!
Prayer and How I See God
by Duane Mabee on January 6, 2022Last week, we began a conversation about prayer that will span about 6 weeks. We’re calling it When You Pray. In the conversations first installment, I asked you to consider three questions.
- How do I see prayer – what is my attitude toward it?
- Why do I pray the way I do and what does it tell me about the way I see God?
- What do I want prayer to become in my life?
I hope you have taken some time to think through those questions, and I would love to hear about your answers. What is God showing you?
For now, let’s talk a little about the second question. It is a critical question. What you think about God will determine how you pray, so how you pray can lead you to recognize attitudes you have about God that you might not know you have. For example, if you view God as austere and unapproachable, you might be overly concerned about saying everything in just the right way. You may sound distant and formal. There may be things you hesitate, if not refuse to pray about. How you view God will determine how you pray. That’s one reason it is critical that we have an accurate understanding of God.
One of the best ways to understand God is to look at His Son, Jesus. Hebrews 1:3 says that Jesus is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of God’s nature. In other words, He is just like His Father. God sent Jesus to save us and to show us what God is like.
This coming week, the Alliance 40 Days of Prayer will focus on Reawakening to the Life, Death and Resurrection of Christ. It is through Jesus’ life that we begin to understand how much God loves us. He wanted to be able to relate to us in our uncertain and chaotic lives. Jesus connected with us in our weaknesses and suffering so He could know us, and we could know Him. Through His death, Jesus connected with us in our needs, our failures and our sin. He chose to take our place and pay our penalty. That’s love. Through His resurrection, Jesus proved He was victorious over our sin. He proved He has the power to save us and meet all of our deepest needs.
When we understand God’s character as it is displayed in Jesus, we see that He love us and wants to draw near to us. He wants to relate to us and show that He understands what it means to be us. He also wants to step into our pain and problems to be the solution. Prayer, true prayer, is grounded in God’s love for us and our love for Him. If we understand how much He loves us it will radically transform how we pray, and it will create a desire in us to pray.
