God listens to you and you alone!

. When you pray are you talking AT God instead of to Him?
. When you pray are you delivering an essay to God or are you communicating with Him?
. When you pray are you concentrating on saying just the right words or are you discussing your relationship with God?
. When you pray are you talking to God in a reality equal to talking to your best friend or neighbour?

When Jesus was teaching about prayer, He wasn’t giving advice on some theoretical, philosophical or “spiritual” practice. When Jesus spoke to His followers about talking to “Our Father in Heaven” He was as serious as one can be. He was speaking to a Being as real as the next person who comes into your home.

Do you pray within that reality? Are your words focussed toward Someone or do your words just kind of drift out of your mouth and into the atmosphere where they dissipate on the air currents? Is the reality of God reflected in how you talk to Him? Is the reality of your relationship with God reflected in how you talk to Him?

In Matthew 7 and Luke 11 Jesus is shown to explain praying in the most realistic of terms. He used examples of a child asking a father for food. He told of a man asking a friend for help. Jesus was telling His followers that our heavenly Father is not JUST as real as our earthly fathers. Jesus was explaining that our heavenly Father is closer and more understanding and more compassionate that our earthly fathers can or will ever be.

.God knows we are needy.
.He knows we are helpless.
.He knows that we are strangers on earth and that we don’t know our way.
.God sees our desperate situation and feels compassion for us.
.God sees our efforts to act as His children and smiles.
.God loves us and longs for us to come to Him, to search for Him to seek Him and to ask Him for what we need. If necessary we are to ask repeatedly, earnestly with the knowledge and expectation that a loving Father is listening.

When you pray, do you talk to God in a way that shows you understand that He is right there with you intently listening to you? When you pray do you understand that you are the only person to whom God is listen? Do you know that you have His full attention; that yours is not just one of billions of prayers to which He is listening? Because God is omnipresent He is everywhere present in equal portion and power. He is only listening to your prayers, just as He is only listening to my prayers and just as He is listening to each individual’s prayers individually.

When you talk to your Creator, do you express yourself to Him in a way that shows that you know that He is near?