Day 8: Engaging Prayer

DEVOTED - by Fred Hammer
 
“Our Lord’s first public act was prayer: ‘As he prayed the heavens were opened.’ The last act of the Crucified before giving up His life in atonement for the world’s sin was prayer.”
Oswald J Hoffman, Life Crucified.
 
I struggle often to remain consistent with prayer. Sometimes it’s finding a quiet place. Sometimes it’s finding a place free from distractions. Sometimes it’s a lack of motivation. While all of these are valid reasons I struggle with prayer, the truth is that many times I am not “devoting” myself to it. Jesus himself was (and is) God. Yet his first and last public acts were in prayer to God the father. You see God doesn’t need me to pray. I need to pray so I can connect with Him. He longs for you and me to enter into union with Him through prayer, but truth be told, he can get our attention whenever and however he wants. For us though, prayer is how we connect to Him. Did Jesus have to pray? No. He was God. But because he was a man, he longed to be in relationship with God the father. Through his example we see that the need for mankind to connect and interact with our Creator. Jesus was devoted to prayer because he longed for being in the presence of our Heavenly Father. If the Son of God made it a priority to spend time in prayer, then surely it is something we should be doing. Join me this week in living out what Paul writes in Colossians 4:2. “Devote yourself to prayer with an alert mind and a thankful heart.”