Prayer Starts with God

I want to share a radical thought. It has transformed my way of praying and my way of thinking about prayer.

For years I believed that my prayers started with me. I had to think them up. I had to get God's attention. Not surprisingly, with this frame of mind, prayer was often a chore.

I learned that I was wrong. Prayer doesn't start with us. Prayer starts with God. That's the radical idea that changed my prayer life. God is the initiator. He moves us to pray. He gives us prayer ideas. He holds out the promises we claim in prayer. When we pray, we are God's instruments.

God is at work in all our praying. He makes His will known to us so that we will ask for the very things He longs to give us. Out of love He burdens us to pray for others so that, in response to our intercession, He can pour out blessings on them.

And it's the Spirit, says Paul, who makes our prayer possible. We don't know what to pray, but we don't have to. The Spirit is there, revealing God's will to us in the Scriptures and bringing God's prayer concerns to life within us. He is nudging us through circumstances and opening our eyes to the needs around us. He is searching our hearts and trying our ways so that He can bring us to true repentance. He is revealing the glory and the goodness of God so that our prayers will be filled with praise and thanks.

We can be confident that God will hear when we come to Him. God answers every prayer that starts in Heaven, every prayer born in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, every prayer based on a sure promise from His Word.

If prayer starts with God, then the first order of business as we learn to pray is to listen to God's whispers, to tune our hearts to Him, to respond to His promptings. Perhaps the first prayer of each day should be, "Lord, teach me to pray. Help me to understand Your purposes, to feel Your burdens, to see what You see, to hear the groans You hear, so that my prayers may be pleasing to You and may accomplish Your purposes."

Prayer as a Conversation with God

It's clear from Genesis 3:8 that God regularly met Adam and Eve in the cool of the evening in order to spend time with them in conversation. It was part of Adam and Eve's regular, perhaps even daily, experience. So on this day when they heard "the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden," they knew it was time for another talk with God.

Prayer is conversation with God. What regularly took place in the Garden of Eden—conversation between God and humans—was prayer. This "prayer" was clearly not a stilted, formal, cliché-filled monologue. I can only imagine it to be a relaxed, uninhibited, informal, two-way conversation. That, I think, is the first and best picture of prayer in the Bible.

What happened there in the garden instructs us about prayer. It shows us first, that God takes the initiative in prayer. It's the Lord who comes to Adam and Eve and calls out. When you feel a desire to pray, it's God who is stirring up that desire in you and inviting you to meet with Him. Prayer is essentially a relationship that begins with God.

This garden event also shows us what sin does to prayer. After they sinned, Adam and Eve were reluctant to meet with God. Instead of skipping out to meet their beloved Friend, we see them hiding in the bushes, feeling ashamed and guilty. Fear has replaced freedom. Sin put a gulf between God and the first human beings. Conversation couldn't happen with Adam and Eve hiding in the bushes. Sin hinders prayer.

Have you ever felt reluctance in coming to God? At times we are like Adam and Eve—afraid of God, hiding behind excuses and hesitant to meet Him. Unconfessed sin, harbored in the heart, cancels out prayer.

But grace restores prayer. Notice that God doesn't walk away and leave Adam and Eve in their hiding place. Instead He calls them out and graciously helps them come to grips with the sin that has estranged them from Him. God initiates the process that leads to forgiveness, to restored fellowship, and to opened channels of communication—to prayer.

From the beginning God intended prayer to be restful, two-way conversation with Him, like that in the garden before sin. God brings us back to that again and again as He comes in grace to meet us each day. God wants to walk and talk with us and to enjoy our company.

When God comes to meet you today, don't hide. Welcome Him! Grace has prevailed. In Christ your sins are forgiven. Go out to meet God laughing and skipping. And have a relaxed, informal dialog that will be a joy for both of you.

Living Prayerfully

Praying countinually does not mean we are to do nothing but pray. It means that we live all of our hours and days so conscious of God that we are actually, at one level or another, keeping company with Him always.

It means walking and talking with God. When Enoch, an Old Testament hero of faith, "walked with God," it meant that God was his conscious companion in all of his daily activities (Genesis 5:22). When you travel with a friend, there's a lot to talk about: sights to see, experiences to share, and decisions to make. When you travel through life with God, there's just as much to talk about. And although you cannot physically see or touch God, He is really with you—a thinking, feeling, willing, communicating, listening person.

Praying continually means making it a habit to talk to God about our everyday experiences. Repeated activities can become triggers for God-consciousness. The famous American general Stonewall Jackson once commented, "I have so fixed the habit in my mind that I never raise a glass of water to my lips without asking God's blessing, never seal a letter without putting a word of prayer under the seal, never take a letter to the post without a brief sending of my thoughts heavenward, never change my classes in the lecture room without a minute's petition for the cadets who go out and for those who come in."

You probably already have some prayer triggers in your life: rising in the morning, sitting to eat a meal, or lying down to sleep. A friend of mine prays every time he gets behind the wheel of his car. Others have learned to pray for every person they meet, every needful situation that comes on the news, every time they enter their place of work, every time the phone rings, every time they hear a fire siren or see an accident, or every time they pass a church.

Praying continually means sharing our thoughts with God. Our minds never lie dormant. No matter what we are doing from morning till night, our minds are always working. The morning news, breakfast on the fly, traffic on the way to work, challenges on the job, dealing with children, connecting with a spouse, relaxing in front of the TV—all engage us mentally in some way. God wants to be in on our thoughts.

Praying continually also means sharing our feelings with God. Feelings are spontaneous inner reactions to things we are experiencing in life. God wants to be in on our feelings. That's why the Spirit prompted James to write, "Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise" (James 5:13).

Try to develop the habit of filling your day with little prayers. Every fresh prayer will bring a sweet inflowing from God.

Prayer as a Way of Life

Reflect

Is prayer a chore or a joy for you? Do you sometimes feel reluctant to pray? If so, what is it that blocks your desire to meet God? Let God help you identify and deal with it.

When you pray, are you aware of meeting a real person—thinking, feeling, willing, acting, talking, listening God?

Are you comfortable talking with God in plain language and in ways that are relaxed, informal, and uninhibited?

What more could you do to be sure that you truly know God's will when you pray?

What "prayer triggers" are already present in your life? What triggers will you try to add today?

Do you dare believe that God really wants to keep company with you? It's true! How does that make you feel?

Pray

Praise the Lord as the prayer-initiating, prayer-hearing God who is present with us through His Spirit and eager to converse with us, who enjoys your company and gives you His joy.

Confess anything that has distanced you from God, including the bad habit of leaving God out of your thoughts, feelings, and experiences.

Ask God to make prayer a joy in your life, for a prayer life built around relaxed, enjoyable, uninhibited daily conversations with Him—continually and naturally.

Thank God for dealing with your sin and eliminating it as a barrier to your relationship with Him, and for the privilege of knowing His thoughts and praying them back to Him.

Intercede for loved ones who may be weak in prayer, for people around you whose prayer lives are constricted because they are hiding from God. Pray that they may have an increased consciousness of God and a desire to walk and talk with Him.

Act

The next time you set aside time to pray, start by saying, "Lord, help me right now to know what you want me to pray." Be open to praise, thanks, confession, and supplication. Wait for impressions or promptings from the Spirit. When they come, pray them.

Take a pleasant walk at the end of your day and be conscious that Jesus is walking with you. Talk to Him as you would to a friend about your day—about things you are thinking, feeling, and doing. Try to imagine what He would say to you.

Try to add at least one new prayer trigger each day during the next week.

Alvin VanderGriend is co-founder of the Denominational Prayer Leaders' Network and a member of America's National Prayer Committee. He currently serves as Evangelism Associate for Harvest Prayer Ministries, Terra Haute, Indiana. This article is an excerpt from his book, Love to Pray. Reprinted with permission.