Prayer--To Whom

Back in the 1970's an easy-to-read New Testament came out--The Living New Testament. It was a paraphrase in modern language. I was taking my first class in the bible, the gospels, and I couldn't get enough of this book. I'd never read the bible as an adult, and I was fascinated with Jesus. I complained to my pastor that a lot of "this stuff" is pretty hard to swallow. He said, Just keep talking to God about it. So I did. Prayers like, "God if you're there, help me make sense of this."

It wasn't long before two scripture verses gripped me and wouldn't let me go: "Jesus replied, '... I will only reveal myself to those who love me and obey me. The Father will love them too, and we will come to them and live with them." (John 14:23 LB); "I am not praying for these alone but also for the future believers who will come to me.... My prayer for all of them is that they will be of one heart and mind, just as you and I are, Father--that just as you are in me and I am in you, so they will be in us,and the world will believe you sent me." (John 17:20-21)

I thought, Here are promises that God will meet me, will be revealed to me, will be in me. There will be an intimate communion with this One who loves me. The God I've been talking to loves me.

As I continued to talk to God, simply verbalizing my thoughts and questions, feelings and fears, hopes and dreams, joys and miseries, I began to get a sense of who this God was for me. I talked to God out loud when I was alone, wrote conversations to God in my journals, offered my thoughts in silence to this God I was getting to know. God began answering by making a scripture important to me, bringing spiritual teachers into my life, comforting me through a song on the radio at just the right moment, providing shoes for our daughter when there was no money to buy them, and even gave me a dream that healed me after more than nine years of severe, chronic illness.

Over the many years I've continued talking to this God who loves, I've come to know the intimate communion that was promised. I have confidence that God will bring blessing when I pray, not because I'm perfect, but because it delights this One who lives in me to help me pray so that good is released in our world.