Conversation
Last Sunday, my pastor taught on 1 John 3: 19-24. The main idea of this sermon was "God loves to assure His kids of His great securing love for them." There were many points to this talk but one thing that stuck out to me was the priority of prayer. My pastor stated, "Assurance of God's love is a key to a praying life." At first, I thought nothing of this idea. "Yeah, we pray because we love God and God loves us." But over the next couple of days, I began to consider more about what that meant. Prayer has always been an odd thing for me. I feel as though if God is sovereign, he already has everything laid out and no petty petition from me will change his mind. This might be true but the argument at hand is a bit different than the sovereignty of God (though I am in no way a theologian and these topics could be very much intertwined so don't take my word for it lol).
The argument here is the relationship between God and me. If I am assured of God's love then I will want to spend more time in communication with Him. A similar theme can be pointed out in our human relationships. I am assured of my sister's love for me and so I choose to communicate with her and trust that she will hold what I''m saying with value.
During this time where we're all simply trying to make through our daily lives communication is critical. Communication with each other (friends, neighbors, relatives) restores us, snaps us back to reality, and adds a little "normalcy" to this whole situation. The same can be said for communication with God. Actually, more can be said for communication with God. God restores us, snaps us back to reality, adds a little normalcy, loves us, convicts us, saves us, pulls us out of the miry clay, and does infinitely more things that we aren't aware of.
And for that, I'm thankful.
This was the reminder that I needed. Recently it has been so easy for me to get wrapped up in the things going on in our world right now that I forget how important it is to maintain a relationship with God. As you said, prayer is our main communication with God. Your blog reminded me of it's importance, so thank you.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading this. I loved the example with you sister that you "are assured of my sister's love for me and so I choose to communicate with her and trust that she will hold what I''m saying with value." It probably doesn't feel like a hassle or taking time out of your day to do it and it just happens naturally. That's how it should be with God too, and it takes time to get to that stage but it seems like that should be something we should strive for. I've seen a lot of post like the quarantine is the perfect time to do so and an opportunity from God. Also I enjoy how prayer doesn't have to be super formal its just a conversation.
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