As I sit in my favorite chair for the first time today, I’m thankful.  Thankful for my savior, my family, my church, my job, and the opportunities I’m afforded because of these things.  Today was a big day for my family.  My mother celebrated her 70th birthday with many of her extended family and some friends at our home.  Her birthday was about 12 days ago, but today was the PARTY.  This occasion also marked the first time many of these folks who I’ve know since childhood had been at my home.  It was such a great feeling to host people you’ve know forever, and share the blessings God has so graciously given us.

Sunday school continues to amaze me.  The number of people is great, but the thing I’m most encouraged about is the interaction.  True learning takes place when you can share the ideas you’ve learned with others.  Questions are asked and answered with honesty and thought.

Today’s lesson dealt with prayer.  This was week 2 in our prayer series.  Week 1 asked the question “What is prayer?”  The answer in it’s simplest form is prayer is communication with God.  Communication is an exchange between people where thoughts, feelings, requests, forgiveness, compassion, etc are given and received.  Communication with God happens differently.  He wants us to talk to Him.  He desires for us to express our thanks, repentance, petitions for others and ourselves to Him.  He also expects us to spend time listening to Him.  No useful communication is one-sided.  Prayer must be followed by silence and time in God’s Word.

The question today was “Why do we pray?”  We had some great answers – direction, help, repentance, requests, and more.  The truth for most of us is we pray to get stuff or help.  We only really think about praying when our circumstances warrant it or we think we can’t live without something.  Our reasons for praying should be the things we discussed, but it’s so hard to get out of our own way.  I want my prayer life to resemble the Romans 12:12, Philippians 4:6, Colossians 4:2, 1 Thessalonians 5:17 model.  I need to pray more for God to reveal my sin to me. I need to be so sickened by my sin that I have no choice than to run to Him to seek forgiveness.  I need to pray more for my enemies and those who don’t love me.  I need to pray more for our class.  I need to pray more for young adults to be drawn to our group.  I need to pray more for us to be the kind of group Christ can use to reach people.

Why do you pray?  Search for the real motives in your life.  Pray every single day this week and never ask for a single selfish thing.  Let’s see what God can do in our church, class, and our personal lives if we commit to seeking Him.

WG