Delightful Prayers: God Wants To Hear From You

I’m so grateful God doesn’t react to my prayers like one woman acted toward me when I tried to approach her. Trying to be friendly, I invited her to sit with my group at a recent women’s fellowship meeting. As I moved closer to her, she threw up her hands and backed away from me. “I’m allergic to people,” she stated. Then she explained that she was highly sensitive to fragrances of any kind.  How sad not to be able to enjoy certain scents, I thought.

The Value of a Prayer

Later that evening, I remembered the woman sitting alone when our speaker talked about the twenty-four elders in Revelation 5 who each held a harp and a bowl of incense (v. 8). I never understood that verse because I don’t care for the smell of incense. Like the woman in the corner, my hand jerks to my face in repulsion. Maybe heavenly incense smells different?

Then our speaker pointed out that the bowls of incense represent the prayers of God’s people. The host of heaven collects each prayer we utter and tucks it into a bowl of pure gold, presenting it to the throne of Heaven as a precious, valued gift. And God reacts with the same delight we would have over the best of smells. Utter delight.

Imagine that! Every single prayer you utter is treated with great deference and decorum! God values highly whatever you say to Him.

I’m so glad God is not repulsed by my prayers!

God delights to hear His children confide in Him. He wants us to share with Him our concerns, heartaches, problems, passions, joys, or whatever else is on our minds. He wants to walk along the garden paths of our lives, interacting with us. Prayer becomes more than asking for stuff: showing happiness when we get what we want and disappointment when we don’t. Prayer becomes sharing life with our Lord, expressing our deepest feelings, telling Him about  those bits of life that we would share with no one else.

God showed me His delight in my prayers last week. Drawn outside by rumbles of thunder, I grabbed my tablet, hoping to catch a photo of a lightening flash. But I quickly realized my unrealistic aspirations. By the time I focused on an area of sky, saw the flash, pushed the button, and let the camera take the photo, the streak was long gone. In my childlike enthusiasm, my brain blurted out one of those impetuous statements. “Oh God, it would be so nice to get a picture of the lightning.”

It wasn’t a request. I knew better. Don’t put God to the test. I mean, yeah, God can do the impossible, but don’t push it for something so trifling as a photo op.

Then the sky lit up with a one-two punch and my finger hit the button. Breathless, I checked my camera roll. Look at the photo I got!

God’s Reaction

And that wonderful Holy Spirit voice in my head said, “Okay! How about this?”

Now why did God answer that prayer that wasn’t even a prayer? Why doesn’t He answer the so much more important desires of my heart? Why wasn’t He turned off by my silly non-request? Why didn’t He back off and say with His hand pinching His nose, “Eeww! Wrong kind of prayer!”

God showed me He was listening. He heard my thoughts! God knows everything we’re thinking, even those things we haven’t begun to stuff into the structure of a prayer. He delights to have conversations with us when we tell Him what we enjoy about His creation, what we’d like to see, what we’d like to have, and what concerns us most. He finds as much delight in our prayers as the finest of fragrances.

God loves to hear us talk.

God is not a genie in a bottle who leaps into action everything we say something. He doesn’t give us backtalk like Robin Williams’ character in the Disney movie, Aladdin. His focus is on you, not what you are requesting. He treasures what you tell Him because it demonstrates your confidence in Him. Your prayers show you believe He exists, He cares about you enough to listen to you, He’s powerful enough to do whatever you ask, wise enough to know when and how to give you His best, and loving enough to care about anything that concerns you.

Taking time to talk with your Heavenly Father is one of the best gifts you can give Him and He is elated when He hears your voice.