The Prayers of Our Hearts – Are They to Be Our Real Focus?

THE PRAYERS OF YOUR HEART DON’T NEED TO BE SPOKEN. God already knows them. Uttering them might in some ways assist in the process of self-understanding, but other than that, prayer requests for the things we want for ourselves are unnecessary. I realise this is probably going to raise an eyebrow or five. But the fact is the very things we should be praying for are ordinarily left right out of our prayer language, for they usually don’t get room beyond us. The things our vocalised prayers ought to be centred upon are: 1) intercession and 2) conforming prayers of discipleship to Jesus, for instance.

Intercessory Prayer

God lays things on our hearts, for others. The more we’re in touch with God’s heart and Spirit, the more frequently, and more constantly we’ll be caused to intercede or mediate for others to God. We cannot always help people with material generosity but we can always help them with a compassionate heart. We can be entirely generous regarding our prayer life. In this, we pray to God for the peace, health, safety and welfare of others in need.

Conforming Prayer

When we ask to be conformed to the Spirit of God, in example, the epitome of Christ, our prayers are destined to be answered as we focus on cooperating with the will of God. The more we pray and the more we focus our minds on this, the more the Spirit tips in the necessary portions of subconscious feedstock so that our prayers will be answered, in fact.

God only gives good gifts, no matter what we ask for.

In closing, Jesus said,

Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!

~Matthew 7:9-11 (NIV).

We can waste a lot of our well-intentioned prayer time asking for things for ourselves, unless that is we’re asking God to bless our journey with him – the journey destined in growth. Let’s get out of the habit of asking him for things like a car, a house, a partner, a partner to change, a particular career etc. He knows what we want already. It’s written on our hearts.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.