Talking With God

Prayer is confusing because it is difficult speaking to someone you cannot see. Moreover, even when you can speak to someone you can’t see (like on the phone), you at least can clearly hear them speak back to you on the other line. Prayer is difficult because you can neither hear nor see the other side clearly. And yet, we are called to communicate with our God in the form of prayer. We are called and taught to take time out of our day to talk with our Father who is in Heaven. 1 John 5:14 explains that we are to have a confidence in our prayers (when they are prayer according to His will and not our own) in that God does in fact hear us. 1 John 5:15 says something even more incredible; we know that God grants to us the requests that we make when we pray according to His will.
            But what does it mean to “ask anything according to his will”? I believe that praying is telling God about the areas in our life in which we need His help. We all know that we need God’s help in ALL areas of our life, and yet prayer is necessary because we specifically need to talk about it with God. We need to have a conversation with Him about how we need His help in specific areas of our life. God’s promise is that He will take care of us, and He will grant us what we ask for in accordance to His perfect will. That is how God is responding back to our prayers, with a response of compassion and grace telling His children that He will act in accordance as a good Father.
            We are called to pray with faith in knowing that God will look after our needs and He will grant our requests. Our requests are meant to be the perfect and best things for our lives. God wants what is perfect and best for us. We think that our requests are things that we see in this world, but our request is meant to be for something far greater. God is what is best and perfect for us! We become so focused on God granting our wishes, that we fail to understand that He is to be our ultimate request. We are requesting for His presence, for His authority, for Him to do what He would.  
            I could pray for a new car in expectation that God will grant my every request. But is a new car the best thing I could ask for to make my life better?
            Prayer is asking God to make our lives better, and the only thing to make our lives better is a relationship with Him. It is in these requests that our prayers turn from us asking to receive things from God, to our prayers becoming about time spent in relationship with Him, talking about everything and anything.

God desires a relationship with His children and wants to talk to us about what is on our heart. He has the answer to all of our pains and hurts and He will grant us our requests, but are we asking for a temporary solution or an eternal one?