Week 5 | Monday

Read: Jeremiah 33:3

Stop and think about this for a second. The God of the universe, the God who created and reigns over everything – that same God wants to hear from you. What’s even more bonkers than that – God has things He wants to share with you. God hears from us, and we hear from Him as we create space for conversations with Him. We call those conversations prayer.

I used to hear my grandfather, the minister, pray when I was a kid. He prayed like the King James version of the Bible, using words like thou and thee and art. He was a minister, too. So, I thought, “Well, that’s like a professional Christian. So, that must be how the best Jesus followers pray, so I must have a long way to go before I can even talk to God because I don’t know how to talk like that at all!”

When I was 16, I remember lying in my bed one morning. Life had kind of fallen in around me. I was really struggling with some things and thought, I need to pray. I don’t know how to pray. I don’t know the words, I don’t know the phrases. I don’t even know if my prayers count if I don’t say them right. BUT I really feel like I need to pray. So, I guess I’m just going to talk to God like I talk to everyone else…like I’m talking right now.

And I did. And that was the first time God really heard me. Had He heard me before? Of course. But something felt different that time. In the prayer that followed, I stumbled on to something that I wouldn’t find the language,   spiritual maturity, or self-awareness to recognize until much later. It’s not the words we use that matter to God; it’s how we approach Him. You don’t need a secret decoder ring, a cipher, insider language, or trade secrets to converse with God. Why we pray matters most. How we pray isn’t about the words we use. That’s what we say. So, when Jesus says, “This, then, is how you should pray,” he’s not saying, “This is it. Memorize these words and recite them daily, and you will know God.” He’s guiding us into a posture appropriate for conversing with Almighty God.

That may sound counterintuitive. Converse casually with the Creator and Sustainer of the universe? Yep. He wants an intimate relationship with you. So, approach Him like you would a friend. He’ll take your words, groans, tears, and your yelps of joy and hear your heart through it all.

Try it out. Write a simple, congenial, personal message to God in this space. Think of it like sending a text. If you could DM God, what would you say (or type, I guess)?