"Our Father who art in Heaven...."

Prayer has been a part of my life as far as I can remember. I remember learning the Lord's prayer at a very early age, and also bed time prayers, "If I die before I wake I pray the Lord my soul to take..." but as a 22 year old, prayer has become such a bigger part of my life. Prayer has taken a role that is so much larger than a simple prayer I prayed as a child.
This week for class we have been focusing, as you can guess, prayer. This week hit me hard as I looked upon my prayer life. I will be honest in saying the many times I take the time to pray throughout the day are more requests to God than anything else. Many times I pray more if life is rough, then when life is good. I feel sometimes as if I have this check-list that I'm keeping God updated on. Once a request gets checked off, or answered then its off the list, never to be looked back upon. As we were discussing today in class, this was in the back of my mind, and I currently feel pretty guilty as I type this. Why is it that I pray more when life is tough, then when life is going well? I don't have a perfectly clear answer to this, but I know I will be trying hard to come to God in prayers of Thanksgiving more frequently because he has been so good to me.

Martin Luther says, in the excerpt from Praying in Faith "If you do not know or recognize your needs, or think you have none, then you are in the worst possible place. The greatest trouble we can ever know is thinking that we have no trouble for we have become hard-hearted and insensible to what is inside us." It's funny as I ponder many mornings at Kuyper College, when asked if there are any prayer requests, very few of us raise our hands to share. Are we becoming hard-hearted?

I agree whole heartedly on Martin Luthers thoughts on what to expect from prayer, he says, "Therefore you should confidently expect from God one of two things; either that your prayer will be granted, or, that if it is not granted, the granting of it would not be good for you."
I have seen this throughout my life. One example: soccer. Several years ago I prayed and prayed to just be able to get back on the soccer team. "It's my life God, I need to just get back in the game, to feel that rush." Yet, after several hip surgeries and a talk with my doctor, saying I would never play the game of soccer again, I didn't understand. Several years down the road, I realized, soccer was my life, it was becoming a "god". Just as Luther says, "that if it is not granted, the granting of it would not be good for you. God wanted to be number one in my life, not soccer. We all might not see the answer we want come out of a situation. A family member dies, a loss of a job, a dream shattered, but remember God knows what he is doing, he is in full control, we must learn to trust him in all outcomes.

Blessings