Seeking the Face of God Through Prayer

It was Juliana Norwich who said:

“I am the ground of they beseeching; it is my will thou shalt have it; after, I make thee to will it; and after I make thee to beseech it and thou beseechest it.  How should it then be that thou shouldst not have thy beseeching?”

We often approach prayer selfishly, regardless of our good intentions.  Think about it. Our prayers are most often filled with things that matter most to us.  Yet, as we mature in our relationship with God, our prayers move beyond the self-centered towards a responsiveness to the presence of God.  There are two aspects of prayer that spurs us towards this type of responsiveness:

1.  Prayer is meant to change.
- “To pray is to change. Prayer is the central avenue God uses to transform us.  If we are unwilling to change, we will abandon prayer as a noticeable characteristic of our lives.  The closer we  come to the heartbeat of God the more we see our need and the more we desire to be conformed to Christ.” Richard Foster

-  When you walk away from the presence of God, you should never be left the same. You approach Him with plenty of baggage and human frailty. Acknowledge this when you approach the throne.

2.  Truly Effective, life changing prayer is a learned discipline
- In Luke 11:1 the disciples, after seeing Christ pray asked, “Lord, teach us to pray…” If the disciples didn’t have it figured out, how do we expect to without first learning how?

-Knowing that prayer is a learned discipline it frees us to “question, experiment, even fail,” as Foster would say.  Our prayer life is subject to human behavior.  That is to say, that it is very easy for our prayers to become a daily habit, rather than a daily discipline. Move beyond your realm of experience and try something new in order to approach God’s face.

- You are not alone. Christ said in John 15:7, “Abide in Him and He will abide in us.” Knowing this, we are charged with constant communication with Father God.