So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.
Luke 11:9-10
Do you remember who taught you to pray? I had several teachers in my childhood. My parents, my grandmother, my aunts and uncles, and Sunday School teachers. I grew up on a farm less than a quarter mile from a country church, where we attended. On Sunday mornings and Sunday evenings as we gathered for Sunday School or Sunday evening training our teacher took us outside to meet if the weather permitted, because there was not a classroom for all age groups. It was there on the steps of the front porch of that little church that we learned Bible verses, heard Bible stories and learned how to pray audibly in the presence of others. In that open air setting each of us kids learned how to pray for those things that bore on our minds and hearts, without worrying that we did of did not say things right. We prayed what was on our hearts.
It wasn’t until much later that I understood that everything about a person’s prayer reveals something about the person who is praying and their needs and concerns.
I began to wonder as a teenager, Is God too busy to listen or answer our prayer? Is God ready to reorder the entire universe in order to make us happy? Is God already way ahead of us and knows before we ask what we desire or need? Our prayers will often reveal much of that. Jesus tells his disciples, and us, here that God hears us when we pray. God answers our prayers and provides for our needs. God forgives us, even before we know to ask for forgiveness. God protects us and God especially expects us to be generous to others. But most of all God desires to be in relationship with us, and it is through our prayer time that we share who we are with God and God’s loving grace surrounds us in relationship.
I will always remember those early childhood prayer times with our teacher. They taught me to be open to God and to others as we prayed together, and they taught me that God is always present to hear our prayers and loves to have us share our deepest concerns with him and with others.
Our prayers are also the beginnings of our Christian actions. It seems that when I pray for something or someone I become involved in that caring concern so that God sometimes shows me something that I might do to help, and in that helping God is beginning to answer my prayers, and the needs of those for whom I am praying.
Questions
- Where and when did you learn to pray? Who were your teachers?
- Are you still learning to pray and open your heart to God?
- How often do you pray, and share your deepest longings and cares with God?
- Do you trust that God will always answer your prayers even if it is not the way you hope the answer will be?
Eric is our current Webmaster and works on the NLS Communications Team. Raised in Judaism, he found Christ and the New Testament at age 16 in a Southern Baptist Church. He searched many denominations for the real church, only to find the Holy Spirit is present in all of them. He's worked for One for Israel, a group of native Israeli believers who are sharing the gospel in the holy land in Hebrew and is part of the only Hebrew speaking seminary in Israel.
