Blind Date

I recently mentioned to my husband how I play this game called "Blind Date" in my head sometimes while we're chatting.

Like the other evening when we were sitting on the couch and he showed me a picture of Tom Brady wearing all of his Super Bowl rings and wouldn't stop calling him, and I quote, "The GOAT."

In my head, it's like that Hyundai commercial where the lady starts up her car and quickly leaves her own blind date who isn't talking about Tom Brady but competitive air drumming.

In all seriousness, my husband could talk about paint drying, and I'd be pretty enamored because he's my bestie and has had to suffer through my own shenanigans like my recent bout of horridly maiming yarn and calling it "crochet."

So, we're even.

But this whole blind date game started to make me think about my prayer life. Am I going on and on about every thought in my head to God or am I having a real conversation with the God who loves me?

We're doing a series on prayer in our Bible Study class by Michael DeFazio called How to Learn to Pray.

It's interesting because, at first thought, it's easy to think, "Oh I know how to pray."

Most of us are at least familiar with the Lord's Prayer (the "Our Father" for my Catholic friends) and there have been times that we've called out to God even when we haven't always followed or obeyed Him (like that one time I thought my plane was going down and told God I'd give my life to Him only to not do that at all once I realized we would land safely. I was kind of the worst...and He's still working on me).

And yes, it is easy to have a conversation with someone you love, but again, I think our issues with prayer stem from how we see God.

First of all, prayer is a conversation for those who love Him, the righteous who seek Him (not those who are desperately in need of saving their own lives. I'm looking at you "There Are No Atheists on Airplanes" Ericka).

When I had yet to submit my life to Jesus, God wasn't answering my prayers.

He was waiting for me to accept His invitation to believe in and follow Him first...which makes a ton of sense when you think about it.

Secondly, the Lord's Prayer can be prayed verbatim of course, but Jesus was modeling for us how to pray. And when we have a conversation with someone we love, we're not reading a script but sharing our hearts. We're talking to them about how we love them, how they inspire us, how we're grateful for all they've done for us. And then maybe we ask for support in what we're going through and help when we feel lost.

And lastly (not at all indicating that this is the last thing we could mention about prayer, but just for the sake of not making this post ten decades long), I think it's important to point out something my friend Shelly mentions in an episode of her podcast on prayer.

The disciples already knew how to pray and yet? They asked Jesus to teach them. He was obviously doing something they hadn't done before–a beautiful, free-flowing conversation with the very God who created them.

And so, my prayer is that we ask God to enter our prayer lives. That if we haven't submitted our lives to Him just yet, we make that our very first prayer, confessing our sins, turning away from them, and asking Jesus to be our one and only Savior.

And from there? Let Him continue to lead us on this journey called life. Because even my husband would agree, He's the only GOAT we need.