We can learn to pray for God’s will not our own.
My mama and I were talking on the phone a couple of nights ago about her upcoming trip to Canada. She has never been to that particular part of Canada and was super excited. She was a little bummed when she learned that her dog sledding excursion was cancelled because there wasn’t enough snow.
I completely understood. I mean, for a lifelong Georgia girl, the idea of having enough snow to go dog sledding, is pretty exciting, kind of exotic. We chatted for a while longer and as we were saying goodbye, she asked me to pray for snow, but not a blizzard.
We laughed at that and said good-bye.
I thought about our conversation the next day. She was just joking. She’s actually quite a prayer warrior, but in our customer service driven society, I feel like we often try to get picky and sometimes downright bossy, with our prayers.
We pray for the perfect job, but we don’t want to move or work harder. We pray for rain, but not on Saturday because we have plans that day. We don’t pray for simply enough money; we pray to win the lottery.
We pray for healing both physically and emotionally, but want it to be immediate, involving no work on our own part, even though we often made the choices that put us in the need of healing. We pray about losing weight, but keep eating cookies.
When Jesus’ disciples asked Him how to pray, the prayer we call, “The Lord’s Prayer,” was born. One of the first parts of that prayer has to do with surrendering to God’s will. That’s not easy when we are raised with slogans like, “have it your way” and “you make your own destiny.” Perhaps we should ask ourselves if we believe that God’s plans for us are good. Do we trust in God’s destiny for us?
Jesus also tells us to ask for our daily bread, not for riches. Most of us are not content with that concept either. We want to have and spend as much as possible.
But, God was well aware that life for His people on earth will always have ongoing tension between the physical and the spiritual. We live on the earth for a time, but we are not supposed to be of it. He sent us Jesus to rescue us from our own nature.
Jesus became one of us. Taught us. Healed us. Died for us to save us and then rose for us. We can learn to pray like true children of God because Jesus taught us how in Matthew and still teaches us today through the Holy Spirit.
Advent seems like the ideal time to be a little more intentional about our prayers. Thankfully, we have Heaven cheering us on.
Have an awesome day!
Wendy 🙂