One evening my husband and I were closing the day in prayer together with our toddler grandson who was spending the night. When it came time for prayer, he quickly made it known that he wanted to pray. So of course, the privilege was his!
I wish I could write exactly what he said but I can’t because there were no understandable words. But what I did hear were the same inflections of my husband as he would pray, the same holding of hands and joining together of a unified voice with God. I heard a joy springing forth with the desire to be like Pops and the want to be heard. Even though I couldn’t decipher the words, I’m sure the Lord understood little Trent’s prayer that night. His prayer connected our hearts with the heart of God.
As we enter this season of Thanksgiving, we would do well to remember the one to whom we should be thankful. Psalm 107:1 reminds us, “Oh give thanks unto the Lord for His steadfast love endures forever.” An excellent way to express our gratitude to the Lord is through our prayers.
Prayer is our connection to heaven; it is a privilege we have as believers because we have access to God through Christ. It is a meeting of heaven and earth where God gives us a glimpse of his glory. Oswald Chambers reminds us of the high price of prayer: “Prayer is not what it costs us, but what it cost God to enable us to pray.”
Prayer aligns our hearts with the heart of God. We tend to think of prayer as an activity but consider that prayer is also an alignment—righting our hearts and minds to the things of God. Jesus affirmed in the Model Prayer that we should pray for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10). There is even more than an alignment of will in prayer; there is an infusion of strength which flows through the prayer relationship. Charles Spurgeon puts it this way, “Prayer girds human weakness with divine strength, turns human folly into heavenly wisdom, and gives to troubled mortals the peace of God.”
Prayer allows us to join Jesus in his work. What is our Lord doing right now? We tend to think that he is only ruling from heaven, but let’s not limit his activity. In addition to ruling, Jesus is at the right hand of the Father praying for us (Romans 8:34; Hebrews 7:25). Warren Wiersbe declares that prayer reveals our Lord’s priorities. He makes his intercession for us part of his ongoing activity. Shouldn’t that also be true for his followers?
So in this season of thankfulness let’s remember to connect with God. Sometimes our prayers may seem as unintelligible as a toddler. But like our grandson whose prayer moved our hearts, our feeble prayers move the heart of God. He longs to connect with us through prayer.
