Seeing God through Prayer

Is prayer on your list of "shoulds" (Along with "I should be exercising more, I should be sticking to a budget...)? It most certainly was on mine. Prayer was the perpetual New Years resolution that I found myself failing at by the first week in February each year. It was one of the many things that I wasn't doing enough of...something else I could beat myself up about or point to and say "See, if you'd just been praying more this would not have happened." This attitude towards prayer got a radical transformation when I heard one sentence that changed my life forever. While attending my first Christian conference, speaker Becky Tirabassi said this

"Prayer is a two-way conversation, one in which you talk to God and then you listen to God speak to you."

To think that the God that ran the universe might have specific things to say to me was a completely new idea. Having been raised in the church I always knew intellectually that God loved me and that Jesus died for my sins but somewhere along the way I adopted the attitude that "God's pretty busy so if I need anything it better be important, I'll need to make it quick and I certainly can't expect a response anytime soon." Now, with the uttering of this new sentence and concept rolling around in my mind I was being taught something entirely different. I was being taught that the Lord not only loves me and knows me intimately but that He longs for me to love Him and know Him intimately and to approach Him with an expectation to hear from Him. Speaker Becky Tirabassi went on to teach that one of the main places that I could expect to hear from the Lord was through His Word (The Bible). When I heard this my attitude about prayer became one of "If the Bible is one of the main places God is going to speak to me then why would I ever want to miss even one day of reading?!" Thus began my adventure in prayer...my two-way, ongoing dialogue with the Creator of the Universe and Author of my Faith. Interestingly enough, the season of life that I was in when I began this continual prayer conversation was when my children were babies. I write in Prayer Starters for Busy Moms "We pray without ceasing because God loves without ceasing and it is through the ACTION of prayer that this love comes ALIVE and is experienced in flesh and blood."


I believe in the power of prayer. After all, Our Heavenly Father could have used any channel he saw fit to release his power and presence on this earth and yet he chose the prayers of his people to be one the main ways it would occur. Prayer helps us see God, hear God and reflect his love and power to those around us. Prayer helps us grow in our faith ultimately helping us stand, like the little boy in France, with our arms flung wide in trust and love towards the One who loved us first.