I was going over my journal tonight and reading some things I wrote down a few years ago. If you are not in the habit of journalling, I highly recommend it. I remember listening to a presentation by the late Jim Rohn about the power of journalling and it stuck with me ever since.
In case you haven't seen a few of my 'journals' I always like to take a snap shot of them as I finished them and fill them up :)
5 journals completed. That's roughly 10 years of thoughts, quotes, #bible verses, sermon notes and so much more.
So while I love talking about journaling, this isn't the purpose of this blog post. Instead, like I mentioned, this is about something I re-discovered while going through my journals tonight....
It's a quote from a fantastic Christian author named Timothy Keller. Sadly, he passed away a few years ago, but if you ever get a chance to read some of his work, please do. This is a quote he wrote a few years before he passed...
"To fail to pray, then, is not to merely break some religious rule - It is a failure to treat God as God...."
Sometimes, I think we like to put God in a box. He's 'our' God. He's 'our' genie in a bottle. He's going to serve me with my prayers....
The absolute insanity of this kind of thinking has hurt Christianity as a whole and not allowed us to revere and be in awe of God as we should. He deserved our praise, not our demands. And like you guys know, because I've mentioned it before.....The one aspect of my walk I would love to change is....My prayer life.
This quote really got me self reflecting on what God means to me.....And I'm not going to go over the 'obvious' positives. However when I read that He is not only our Father but also our friend I think that gets us into trouble when we don't reverence Him like He should be. Now I'm not saying, He's not going to take care of us. He does. It's His promise. But let's remember who we serve....
He's the Creator of the universe. Not some genie in a bottle that a lot of Christians like to treat Him as. He wants to spend eternity with us, and that's evidence through Jesus Christ, and while this isn't a 'works' way of salvation...I do believe there must be respect and obedience.
But getting back to that quote above....
Prayer. It's not meant for us to 'let God know' what we are thinking. He already does, before we even mention a word. The power of prayer is to treat God, as God. To commune with Him. After all, we are going to spend an eternity with Him....We should at least dedicate some time to Him while we are on the earth :)
Just some random thoughts about #faith on a Monday night. I hope you are having a great start to your work week!