Conversations With God
We are going to talk about prayer for a little bit this morning.
My intended end this morning is to provide information from the Scripture that will help us improve our communication with God.
This morning we are going to examine a very important principle of prayer.
The exciting part of this discussion is that success in prayer is well within the reach of every one of us this morning.
We’re going to break prayer down for success this morning.
Text: Psalms 5:3 In the morning, O LORD, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation.
I. Prayer Is Conversation With God.
I know that this first point is very elementary but I decided to cover it because it is important to be reminded of this truth.
I read a little book called the Idiot’s Guide To Prayer and in that book the authors Mark Galli and James Bell tell us what prayer is not:
They say:
- It’s not self help a way of lifting ourselves up, making ourselves better.
- It’s not psychotherapy, therapy for weak people who need a crutch.
- It’s not wishin and hopin, it’s not wishes turned Godward.
- It’s not lot’s of babble, the more wordy I make it the more effective it is.
- It’s not a specific language, thee’s thou’s shouldst and wouldsts.
- It’s not a schizophrenic exercise talking and hearing voices.
David explained exactly what prayer is in Psalms 5:3 in the morning you hear my voice.
What he was saying is every morning I get up and talk to God.
Every morning I begin my day by having a conversation with God.
That is very important because I think we get confused about what we are suppose to do sometimes in terms of praying.
We have questions like:
- Have I said enough?
- Have I said the right things?
- Did I have faith when I prayed that prayer?
- Did God hear me?
Well this point takes all the mystery out of prayer.
Successful prayer is really this simple; it’s taking the time to have a conversation with God.
Rather than just listing things out, it’s a far better and more understandable concept to see prayer as talking out the situation or our needs or whatever is on our minds with God.
And you are done when you have said everything that needs to be said.
You can stop when you feel better, when you’re not stressed out anymore.
The key is to talk to God a lot, on a regular basis, about everything.
Then here’s the result of conversing with God.
II. You Develop A Close Relationship With Him
David adds 4 words onto the end of Psalms 5:3 that are very telling.
He says every morning I talk to you about my requests and here’s the 4 words:
and wait in expectation.
After he’s talked with God, he’s not stressed.
There’s no doubt.
He says he’s waiting in expectation.
That’s the close relationship that David had with God which has now produced faith.
There are so many things to talk to Him about.
About our lost love ones and friends, our own personal relationship with Him, things that are hard to talk about and hard to deal with, things that we are feeling stress about, problems we are trying to solve.
The more we talk things out with God the better.
