Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Are we praying right?

Last sunday I heard a wonderful message during church. The pastor talked about a little incident he went through couple of weeks ago. After attending a meeting he had, he met some people, some others were introduced to him and so on. After he left the office, he walked to his car and right before starting the engine, somebody comes running across the parking lot calling him "pastor, pastor, pastor". The pastor thought he was getting old for he didn't remember seeing this person never before" So the excited man comes over and approached him from the window and saluted the pastor like if they were old time friends. So the pastor finally asked him, have we met yet?. The guy said, "no", but I know you are a pastor from a church in the outskirt of panama city. And then the guy asked "I know, we don't know each other, but I wanted to get from you 5 dollars" The pastor was totally caught off guard with this, he didn't know what to do, never before had been in this situation, he didn't expect this and didn't know how to deal with it. So the pastor, after making up his mind, did ask him, what was the five dollars for? And the guy said, for bus fares.

Now, let me explain this, in Panama, with five dollars you can make it halfway through the entire country on a bus. So the pastor started to doubt about the sincerity of this perfect unknown person. After reading his uneasyness, the guy finally said "well, you don't have to, if you don't want" and tried to make him feel bad about thinking over it. So the pastor finally left that place and he felt totally disgusted about the whole situation, how he felt abused, used, manipulated by a perfect stranger, who calling himself a christian tried to take advantage of him.
Then, he heard God whispering to his ear, telling him, "son, now you can see and feel a bit about how I feel when lots of people come to me with their whish list to me, but never come to me for a relationship, many of them christian including yourself sometimes, don't care about the Provider, but only the goods you can get from me"

We come to God in prayers all the time, and the first thing we shoot is our needs. Oh yes, we all have needs, we will never be completely needless, we'll always have things to ask for and God always will have tons of blessings ready to be poured out to us upon request, but, that's not all about praying. Praying is to talk to God. We worship him with prayers of thanksgiving, we aknowledge that we need Him, and of then of course we present to Him our needs. But what do we do? we are not thankful at all anymore, we seem to forget what he's done for us and only concentrate on looking at him as our celestial santa claus, without longing to have a beautiful and productive relationship with the owner of everything, the creator of the whole universe, the King.
So, this phrase sums up, the message I heard on sunday. "The answer to our prayers is directly related with the quality of our relationship". We can't pretend to get everything we want from Him, without committing our lives for Him in sanctity and justice, otherwise it would be like using, manipulating and abusing God, which we can not do after all.

Now, imagine, that your dear and beloved friend comes to you, running across the parking lot, calling out "pastor, pastor, pastor", "do you think I can borrow five bucks?" For sure he would give it out, without hesitation, moreover, he would ask if five dollars was enough and he would consider a privilege having been asked this.

Don't you think, our heavenly Father would feel and act the same way? I mean, he would say, my son, my daughter, I will not only give what you need but what is good for you. In other words, you cultivate a healthy relationship with your spouse, friend, parent and there would be very little they would not do for you, how much more our Redeemer, our source of blessings, how much more he would do for you and me, who valorate His frienship and supremacy in our lives.

I just think it was a powerful message, and just make me reconsider my prayer sessions and think carefully how I am carrying it and how I am relating to Him.

Think about it.

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