Prayer

We’ve all heard that God loves us in a personal way, but accepting that love, seeking to grow in love with God, and really experiencing His love is hard for most of us. He seems so big and far away. Sometimes we blame Him when life is painful. There are other times we’ve messed up and may not want to deal with that just yet. It can be scary to let God get too close to us, He might ask something difficult or embarrassing of us! These things may keep us from expecting to have a loving close relationship with God, but that is the deepest purpose of our lives and in time, that relationship comforts us like no other.

God made us for relationship with Him. Here are just a few examples from scripture to remind us of the personal love God has for us:

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. Genesis 1:27

Know that the Lord is God.    It is he who made us, and we are his;  we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.  Psalm 100:3

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. Ephesians 2:10

See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure. I John 3:1-3

What do these verses tell us?  They say that God created us, we are His, He made us for good works, and that He has lavished love on us, and we were created to be like Jesus!

We all sometimes wonder who we are and why we are here. How do we come to understand who we are and find our purpose? Through developing a personal and loving relationship with the One who made us. That comes through seeking Him. One of the ways we seek Him is in personal prayer.

Talk to your spiritual father about what kind of prayer rule to follow. For many, praying morning and evening prayers with a prayer book is a beautiful way to structure time seeking God but be sure to add your own personal prayers too. Pray to God in short prayers throughout the day and with your own words. Just as talking openly with people you love develops closeness and clarifies issues, praying will help you to become more honest and open with God and with yourself. Prayer is one of the ways we experience the love of God in our own hearts.

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God’s love in relation to understanding our identity is one of many topics geared for young men in our new book Forged which is available for purchase now at www.woveninhislove.org.