How many times have you prayed to God asking Him to provide financially for the upcoming bills? Maybe you asked Him to help you parent your kids better, or change your kids to act better. Have you ever asked Him to give you favor for a promotion? Or to bless you this year?
Most of the time, our prayers are filled with requests, right? And let’s be honest, God does want us to come to Him to ask about our needs and desires. God loves it when we pray and delights in helping us with every single part of our life. But prayer ought to be more than just that.
As a child, we may have prayed something like this:
God, is it true that if my dad uses his golf words, he won’t get into Heaven?
God, please tell Jesus to bring back dinosaurs.
God, I bet it’s hard for you to love all of everybody in the whole world. There’s only four in my family, and I could never do it.
Prayers of children can be so innocent, honest, and funny! However, as we mature and grow, so should our prayers. Mother Teresa once said, “I used to believe that prayer changes things, but now I know prayer changes us, and we change things.”
The truth is God knows what we need and what we want. Prayer is the conversation part of our relationship with God that keeps us on the same page with Him. It’s both hearing and speaking, yielding and moving. We aren’t convincing God of something with prayer. In fact, He is changing us with prayer.
Unfortunately, many of us do not move past wanting something from God to doing something with God. Prayer is the most powerful tool we’ve been given on our assignment. Our assignment is simply to bring Heaven down the way Jesus did when He walked the Earth.
Jesus changed lives literally everywhere He went. Mark 1:15-20 says, “His message was this: “At last the fulfillment of the age has come! It is time for God’s kingdom to be experienced in its fullness! Turn your lives back to God and put your trust in the hope-filled gospel!” As Jesus was walking along the shore of Lake Galilee, he noticed two brothers fishing: Simon and Andrew. He watched them as they were casting their nets into the sea and said to them, “Come follow me and I will transform you into fishers of men instead of fish!” Immediately they dropped their nets and left everything behind to follow Jesus. Walking a little farther, Jesus found two other brothers sitting in a boat, along with their father, mending their nets. Their names were Jacob and John, and their father Zebedee. Jesus immediately walked up to them and invited the two brothers to become his followers. Jacob and John dropped their nets, stood up, left their father in the boat with the hired men, and followed Jesus.”
The disciples immediately knew He was different. They had never seen someone with so much authority and anointing, they longed for what Jesus had. It wasn’t a religion like they were used to of regimented prayers. Jesus prayed and lives were changed.
So how do we pray like Jesus? He shows us how in Matthew 6:19-20 in what we know as the Lord’s Prayer. Let’s take a look at why this prayer is so transformational. It says, “This, then, is how you should pray: “ ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
The prayer Jesus teaches us begins with our Father. During that time, God was not portrayed as Father. This was a foreign concept for the disciples to relate to God in this way. In fact, Father here is actually Abba which is translated to Daddy. That is a whole different level of relationship that had not yet been explored. 🤯
So when it comes to prayer, relationship (not religion) is everything! Jesus came and transformed prayer from religious to relational. We now have the freedom to call on God as our Daddy. No matter what your concept of “daddy” is, God the Father is incomparable to any person on this planet, which brings us to the next portion of the prayer hollowed be your name.
Hollowed means holy. This is Who God is, His character, His power, His promise, His goodness. It’s recognizing Him as holy and coming to Him with a posture of praise. When we do this, we come to Him looking up in awe of Him, not down at ourselves. Names of God in the Bible can help us identify and connect to His holiness:
JEHOVAH JIREH - God Who Provides
JEHOVAH NISSI - God My Victory
JEHOVAH SHAMMAH - God Who Is There
JEHOVAH SHALOM - God of Peach
JEHOVAH RAPHA - God our Healer
JEHOVAH ROHI - God our Shepherd
When we acknowledge and proclaim Who He is, we are posturing our hearts in praise, and we are looking up to Him. Think of a child when they make a mistake or when they’re shy. They tend to look away or look down until a loving parent gently raises their chin so their eyes lock. God is the lifter of our head. (Psalm 3:3)
God truly does love it when we pray and delights in helping us with every single part of our life.
Crawl in His lap today and look up. He wants us to live with Him not only for Him. Let this be the year of lifting our heads!
Want more?
You can check out this message from Pastor Michael Adams on YouTube at youtube.com/mylgc called Pray First Week Two or check it out on our app at LifeGate Church Villa Rica. Don’t forget about GROW, Connect, and NEXT!
Written by: Brittany Holbrook 1/21/24
Devotional for LifeGate Church