Biblia

PRAYER, NEED FOR

PRAYER, NEED FOR

Many view God only as a kind of heavenly genie, ready when you rub the lamp of prayer to appear and say, “Yes, master; what do you want me to do?” But God is not like that. God is sovereign. God moves according to his own purposes, and he does not play games with us. He is not to be mollified and placated by a temporary return to him when we get into difficulty.1032

Do you ever play the game “how far”? Its rules are really simple—you fill up your gas tank and then drive to see how far you can go before you fill up again. You watch the gauge nervously as it falls closer and closer to the big E.

What about your spiritual gas tank—do you play “how far” with it, too, trying to see how far you can get on a single fill-up?1033

A four-year-old boy once saw a picture of Christ praying and asked what Jesus was doing in that picture. When he was told that Jesus was praying, the youngster responded by asking who Jesus was praying to. After being told that Jesus was praying to God, the young boy replied, “But Jesus IS God!”

This same thought was captured well by St. Cyprian who said, “If He prayed who was without sin, how much more it becomes a sinner to pray.”1034