God Welcomes Our Prayers

Often we are not sure whether our prayers are hitting the spot, but so long as they are freely offered, we can be sure that they are. I like the way Richard Foster expresses it in his book entitled “Prayer”. He begins by quoting someone else: “Pray as you can, not as you can’t.” But then he goes on to comment: “We today yearn for prayer and hide from prayer. We are attracted to it and repelled by it. We believe prayer is something we should do, even something we want to do; but it seems as if a chasm stands between us and actually praying. We experience the agony of prayerlessness. We are not quite sure what holds us back.” Foster goes on to say: “Our problem is that we assume prayer is something to master the way we master algebra or motor mechanics,” and he goes on, “We will never have pure enough motives, or be good enough, or know enough in order to pray rightly. We simply must set all these things aside and begin praying. .... What I am trying to say is that God receives us just as we are and accepts our prayers just as they are. In the same way that a small child cannot draw a bad picture so a child of God cannot offer a bad prayer.”