My Selfish Prayer

Yesterday was Star Wars day, today is the national day of prayer, I imaging that it is only a matter of time before the tow days coincide, which will be really cool.

Anyways, I want to talk about prayer for a bit. My kids learned to pray pretty early. They fight over who gets to pray over the meal, so we have a schedule and it is very important to keep teh schedule. Even the 2 year old has his turn. His prayer is something like “Tay u Jus, Fud, MAN!!!!” If you don’t speak 2 year old this translates to “Thank you Jesus for this food. Amen.”

I learned to pray when I was very young too. I don’t remember when I learned to pray, I only remember always knowing how to pray. I think in some way kids are great at the idea. Asking for something is natural to kids, they have to ask for everything to start with, it takes time before they can start helping themselves.

I think that is kind of how prayer goes for us, we start out asking God for everything, but then we start doing a lot more for ourselves till we only ask Him when we can’t. We want to rely on our own abilities, but I think God wants us to rely on Him. A lot of folks seem to think that God doesn’t want us asking for stuff all the time, but that doesn’t seem to fit with the Bible if you ask me. Jesus says “if a son asks his father for a bit of bread, would the father give his son a stone? How much more does the Heavenly father delight in giving good gifts to His children?” The point isn’t that God wants us to stop asking for stuff, He wants to give us great and amazing things, not a bag of rocks. The point is that God wants to give us good gifts, so that is what we should ask for. Here Jesus is talking about the Holy Spirit, but in other places it speaks of seeking the fruit of the Spirit, and other such things.

Maybe that is why we find it so hard to attain the fruit of the Spirit, we try to build that in our lives, when God really wants to gift us with it.

Have you prayed today? What did you ask for? Have you asked for the fruit of the Spirit before? Have you received? How did it go?