The Wilful Sunflower

It's not news to me that your family background will affect the way you see God and therefore affect your relationship with God. But somehow I hadn't taken this one step further and realised that it will also affect the way I pray.

Although, come to think of it, I've always known that I'm more comfortable addressing God as "Lord" in my prayers instead of "Father". For quite awhile now, I've been trying to consciously address God as "Father" when I pray.

This was one of the things we talked about at camp, since the theme was on prayer -- prayer as relationship with God, with self and with others. I already knew most of what was taught, but it was a good reminder. Some stuff made me think...

• Most books on prayer are "how-to" books. But prayer should be as natural as speaking. If a child is healthy and all his organs are functioning properly, he starts speaking all on his own. No one needs to prompt him to do so. In the same way if we have a healthy relationship with ourselves, God, and others, we'd simply find ourselves praying without even needing to think about it.
• We like to explain God's answer to prayer as being "yes", "no", or "wait". But the key to prayer is to cultivate a relationship with God so that we are praying His will. In turn the answers to our prayers will all be "yes & amen".
• We live in a world that measures things by how useful they are to us, and we often unconsciously bring this concept into our relationship with God too. Our relationship with God becomes very functional and result-driven, only about getting God to do things (spiritual warfare, blessings, healing, etc.).
• The prayer Jesus taught us (the Lord's Prayer) is based on relationship, not method. It begins with "Our Father", establishing relationship, and there is mention of forgiveness, which again is a relational term.
• In fact, the important thing is to have a right attitude instead of the correct method. Our primary concern should be God's name, God's kingdom, and God's will ("Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven"). This is followed by the secondary concern of our physical needs ("give us this day our daily bread"), relational needs ("forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us"), and spiritual needs ("lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil").
• The saying "prayer changes things" is untrue; prayer changes us. We bring our perspective to God, but in the process of talking to Him, our perspective changes. [I once heard another speaker say of prayer, "How can you sit in God's presence day after day and not be changed?"] Prayer is therefore a transforming process and is dynamic.
• True prayer is to be found in living an ordinary life of attentiveness to the very mundane world God created us for and set us in, in friendship with God.
  --Roberta C. Bondi
• Prayer fulfils the two greatest commandments: to pray is to love, and to love is to pray.
• We must be able to see ourselves through the eyes of God and become rooted in our identity as sons and daughters of God. Otherwise, our search for significance & value drives us. It is only when we find our worth in Christ that we can live for God and live out His will. Then we can pray from His perspective: "Lord, make my life count."

 
The speaker left us with four questions to ponder, which I haven't yet had time to think about:

1. When was the first time I became aware that there is a God?
2. What was God like to me then?
3. Who is God to me now?
4. In what ways have my understanding of this God affected my prayer?