The Builder and The Architect

God speaks to us in many different ways, like through his Word or his Spirit. Most of us probably can’t hear him or don’t recognize him when he is speaking to us. But how does God speak WITH us? LIke in a converstaion?

I ask this question because I I was reading a blog post about praying and it mentioned how one way we can pray is just to talk to him. Talk to him as if you were talking to a friend. The post contrasted this against how we typically hear people pray. That is, in “prayer talk.” A transformation in our speeh patterns and grammar and the amount of times we use some form of God’s name as we approach him in prayer. The post says this is not necessary. It says that we can talk to him as openly, as harshly vulnerable, and as simply as we want. As if we are chatting with a friend, or baring our soul.

I totally agree with that, especially when praying is an intensely vulnerable time. However, is this not even more difficult. Why don’t we do this in the first place? Why do we default to prayer talk? I think it is becuase it is easier. I think it is because we don’t feel like we are actually conversing with God. I mean, when you stand and give a speech, you don’t talk in a conversational style. You don’t get any verbal input from the audience until later (and it is poor speech etiquette, but that is a different subject). But I think it is because we know we aren’t going to have this back-and-forth conversation with God, where we say something and he immediately responds and vice-versa, that we default to prayer talk, that we find it difficult to merely converse with him. At least, that is how I feel. Not that I am overly flowery when I pray. I really try to be “down to earth,” as it were, too. But isn’t there just something different when you are talking to someone you know isn’t actually conversing with you? (Not that God isn’t, in the big picture, conversing with us. But I am refering to the immediate conversation style one would have with another as if they were conversing on the phone or face to face.) Or am I just missing it?

So I agree that that is how we should talk to God, but I don’t see how it is easy or at all natural.

What do you think? How do you talk to God? With prayer talk or conversationally? Which do you find easier?

I believe every Christian must come to this question in all areas of our lives:

What am I willing to do in order to Glorify God above all else?

Am I willing to bite my tongue? Am I willing to miss a meal? AM I willing to sell my car? Am I willing to miss a day’s worth of meals? Am I willing to quit my job? Am I willing to stay with my wife? Am I willing to be abstinent? Am I willing to give even when I cannot afford it? Am I willing die as many deaths as necessary? AM I willing to make Love my priority? Am I willing to put the past behind me? Am I willing to suffer? Am I willing to reconcile? Am I willing to accept the Grace of the I AM? Am I willing to die?

Too many times, I don’t know how to answer that.

Question: What if God designed marriage more to make us holy than make us happy?

This is a subtitle to a book name “Sacred Marriage” that I intend to read, but it is also a very challenging question nonetheless and a question I will tackle some time in the future in this blog.

What if, to be truly tolerant, we have to tolerate others’ intolerances?

What would you think if you saw an apple seller catch a thief and take from the thief an apple that he stole only to give the thief a better apple?

Does commitment really have anything to do with love and/or happiness?