By David ReayThursday 24 Sep 2020LifeWords DevotionalsDevotionsReading Time: 2 minutes
Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. (NLT)
How sad to hear of Christians who do not want to bother God with their minor concerns. They seem to assume he is preoccupied with Middle Eastern politics or pandemics or climate change. And so he is too busy, and we don’t want to burden him further.
This badly misunderstands both God and prayer. Our God is not like us: he is an expert at multi-tasking! He can hear millions of prayers at the same time. And further, he delights in each and every one of them. And prayer is not some childish insistent demand that God jump to our every command or grant our every wish or dream. Prayer is our way of expressing our helpless dependence on God and sustaining and deepening our relationship with him.
We are free to bring every concern of ours to God. If it concerns us, it concerns him. And it is often the small things that trip us up. Those niggling stones in the shoe that hinder our progress and make life less than it should be. Bring such irritants to God. He may remove them or give us strength to bear them. But withholding them from him is futile: he already knows about them in any case.
Nothing is too trivial to be brought before the Father who cares for us. We do not demand or insist or throw a tantrum to get his attention. We merely share what is heavy on our hearts no matter how small. As the saying goes, a care too small to be turned into a prayer is a care too small to be turned into a burden.
Blessings
David