Think About Who You're Talking To

I've always enjoyed hearing someone pray who had "the gift" of prayer (I call it a gift, "talent" is just the wrong word.)  I can think of several people that I've known in the past, men who were my father's age, that I always loved for the preacher to call on to pray, especially at the closing prayer just before the choir sang "God be with you 'til we meet again" and we trooped home for pot roast and mashed potatoes (the real kind, not the ones out of a box!)   It just seemed that their prayers were so, well for lack of a better word, soothing.  Their words flowed without effort, each syllable like a healing coat of Carmex to be painted on the dry, parched lips of the backsliders and backbiters at the Baptist church.  I loved how their voices rose and fell with passion and how their familiar tone and command of the language with which they were so steeped, soothed my Junior Department heart and made things right between me and God.

I find myself in my own prayers saying the stupidest things (thankfully He doesn't think they're stupid however) when I start clarifying about who I'm praying about as if He didn't already know.  "God, please watch over (any name will do here), You know, they're the one that (fill in your own description of what might have happened to cause the reason for my prayer in the first place) as if He didn't already know these very people intimately without my promptings.  I catch myself doing this all the time. I guess I think that I've got to introduce Him to them or their circumstances just so He'll know exactly who it is that I'm talking about or why I'm praying for them.  And it's only when He gently chides me with His unseen finger digging in to my temple that I realize (again) that He is so sovereign. That He already knows my heart and what I am asking for.  That all He wants is for me to just talk to Him like a best friend Who needs no explanation for anything or about anyone.  I may not have that "gift" of uttering beautiful, Carmex-like prayers but He listens all the same.  You, me or Billy Graham, we all reach that same Holy ear....that's nothing less than awesome.