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WILDLY SIMPLE PRAYERS

We have been tuned to think of prayer as a recital or a show of a person’s spiritual standards. The Bible actually tells us otherwise. Matthew 6:5 NIV says, “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.” The wildest prayer that we can pray is one that doesn’t focus on the exuberance of verbosity or exaggeration of words but focuses on expressing all that is ebbing within the depths of our hearts.

There are three elements in a simple prayer that can yield wild results in our lives:

• Get alone:

Jesus says, “But when you pray, go away by yourself, shut the door behind you, and pray to your Father in private. Then your Father, who sees everything, will reward you.” God loves to get alone with us. Why does God want us to be alone with Him?

- He wants us to spend some undisturbed time with Him.

- He wants some of our prayers to be “unheard” in the ears of men.

- He wants our private time with Him to be unobserved.

• Keep it simple:

God is not impressed by “big” words. Jesus says: “When you pray, don’t babble on and on as the Gentiles do. They think their prayers are answered merely by repeating their words again and again.”

Prayer is an “anytime, anywhere, anyone” activity. God is not looking for a header or a footer in our prayers. God is especially not interested in rote prayers, which are ritualistic, meaningless, thoughtless, and repetitive. Prayers also don't need to be long in an effort to convince God about the weight of the matter.

• Don't copy others:

Jesus says, “Don’t be like them, for your Father knows exactly what you need even before you ask him!” God is not interested in prayers that are copied from others. We don’t have to be big preachers to get God’s attention. Sometimes we focus on finding the best pattern of prayer to get God’s attention, forgetting that our Father God wants us to talk and relate to him just like a child.

The bottom line is prayers that are wildly simple and proceed from a sincere heart have direct access to the heart of the Father.

Reflection time:

1. Examine the ritualistic aspects of your prayer time.

2. What are those aspects of your prayer that you have complicated?

3. How can you increase your one-on-one time with God?

Have a little chat about all that you have written down with God.