Luke, I always think of the analogy of a married couple who live in a house together, him at one end & her at the other & never communicate yet consider themselves married!! I live on my own in a converted garage which is part of the main house that my family live in & yet we rarely converse & so I am alone for days, weeks without speaking to them. I can go out to their room & try to converse but most of the time they are not interested in talking to me & so conversation dies & I return to my room. If they are in the mood then we can spend an hour just chatting, usually about their interests... Sadly I am noticing that my prayer life is doing much the same thing of late, so I am going to use these next four weeks listening to your series & working on my prayer life!!
Man, that's hard, but I think you're on to something. Jesus, as a practicing Jew, would have prayed the Shema, and would have done this three times a day. It's a short prayer, and He gave us a version that we know as the "Our Father". The word Shema means "to hear", but in a responsive engaging way. So my take on this is that when we pray, God listens, and when we read His Word, we (should) listen. A good explanation is given on @bibleproject . I pray that your journey to an intimate relationship with our Father is productive and fulfilling.
Luke, I always think of the analogy of a married couple who live in a house together, him at one end & her at the other & never communicate yet consider themselves married!!
I live on my own in a converted garage which is part of the main house that my family live in & yet we rarely converse & so I am alone for days, weeks without speaking to them. I can go out to their room & try to converse but most of the time they are not interested in talking to me & so conversation dies & I return to my room. If they are in the mood then we can spend an hour just chatting, usually about their interests... Sadly I am noticing that my prayer life is doing much the same thing of late, so I am going to use these next four weeks listening to your series & working on my prayer life!!
Man, that's hard, but I think you're on to something. Jesus, as a practicing Jew, would have prayed the Shema, and would have done this three times a day. It's a short prayer, and He gave us a version that we know as the "Our Father". The word Shema means "to hear", but in a responsive engaging way. So my take on this is that when we pray, God listens, and when we read His Word, we (should) listen. A good explanation is given on @bibleproject . I pray that your journey to an intimate relationship with our Father is productive and fulfilling.