Prayer & Conversation

Time flies! We are at the halfway mark of our “Loving to Talk to God” Bible Memory Challenge leading up to Valentine’s Day. We are at DAY #7.

Not on board yet? Find the Memory Verse List here. Don’t have time now? Grab the list and do it the first 14 days of any other month. Building up memorized Bible verses will sustain you just when you need it.

Today’s thought to go along with our memory verse is, Prayer is a two-way conversation. The totality of prayer isn’t just us talking to God, but allowing God to talk to us through His Word and the working of the Holy Spirit.

DAY #7 MEMORY VERSE

Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not. Jeremiah 33:3

Prayer is a two-way conversation

Yep! At least two parties are involved when it comes to real conversations. One-way conversations aren’t really conversations at all. They fall more into the speech, monologue, discourse, or even a diatribe realm. They aren’t conversations. Conversations are sharing between two people or more.

Ever looked up the meaning of “Conversation”?

: an informal talk involving two people or a small group of people : the act of talking in an informal way.

“Conversation.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster,
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/conversation. Accessed 6 Feb. 2022

I love the thought that prayer can be an informal conversation with my Lord. Sure, He is a great and mighty God, but He is also a Friend.

I was thinking about how we keep conversations with friends going and our conversations meaningful. Here are four things that came to my mind.

Respect the other person(s).
Call them by name.
Make time to talk to them.
Share your feelings.

I think that I should remember to do these things in my conversations with the Lord as well.

Keeping Conversations Alive

Respect the other person(s).

Respect in any relationship is a good start to good communication.

God shows us respect. He makes us His children. He takes time for us. He leaves us His Word for guidance. He gave us the Holy Spirit for guidance. He even gives us freewill.

When friends chatter, you must have respect for each other, or your conversations sometimes don’t end up so nice. Especially when you are hurt or upset about something. You must have respect for the other person, or you may say something you will regret.

I think just taking that moment to remember Who God is and what He has done for us brings that respect for Him into focus as we go to Him in prayer.

Call them by name.

I love it when people call me by name. I try to call people by name when I can. Sometimes it puts them at ease or makes them feel you remember them, or even makes them feel you know who they are. I have found, especially working in women’s ministry groups so long, that we have some women that look at calling them by name as something special because they just don’t have many or any people in their lives that pay any attention to them. So, I try to do some name calling (and not the bad kind).

I think about how well God knows me. He knows the very number of hairs on my head (Matthew 10:30). He says I’m more value than sparrows (Luke 12:7).

Jesus mentions “Our Father” when He teaches how to pray in Matthew 6:9-13.

After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Matthew 6:9

God has so many names. Try using them in your prayer conversations. Wonderful, Counselor, The Almighty God, Prince of Peace, Jesus, Friend, and so on. Get personal! Maybe even take the time to do a study on the names of God and what they mean. It will bless your heart.

Make time to talk to them.

When we love and care for people, we want to spend time with them. Talking to them becomes a desire that we have.

Like I mentioned yesterday in DAY #6, of our Bible Challenge, prayer takes dedication. Prayer isn’t always convenient. We may have to get up early, stay up late, miss a tv program, or perhaps stop scrolling our phone for a little bit. We plan what we will wear, where we will eat lunch, what we will have for dinner, and many other things. Making time for prayer must get more priority in our lives.

God takes the time to listen to us. God took the time to have His Word recorded for us. God took the time to send His Son to die for our sins. We surely can take time out of our day to talk to Him. We make time for so many other things. If prayer is important to us, we will find the time for it.

Share your feelings.

When we are having conversations with friends, it is all about sharing. If they are close friends, we feel that freedom to share our feelings and what is on our hearts. Our close friends want to know our joys, our sorrows, our desires, and even our dislikes.

God is the same way. He wants to know what is on our heart. He wants to know what we really think. He wants us to share that with Him in prayer.

God shares His feelings for us all throughout the Bible. He shares His love and His concerns for us. He even shares likes and dislikes in His Word. We will never truly understand and know God, but when we read the Bible, we begin to understand God and His ways a little more. We begin to know His thoughts a little more. That helps to have more intimate conversations with the Lord through prayer.

If you look at our memory verse, we know God wants us to share with Him. He says to “call” and He will “answer”. And He doesn’t just answer, but does it in great and mighty ways.

Personal Bible study and prayer should go hand in hand. It would be nice if God spoke to us each audibly like Moses or some of our Bible heroes, but we can’t rely on that to happen. We must hear God through reading His Word. We must hear God through the preaching of His Word. We must hear God through other Christians. We must listen intently and allow the Holy Spirit room to move in our lives.

I hope I can remember these four things I mentioned to keep conversations alive when I talk to the Lord. (Respect, call by name, take time, and share my feelings). I think those things put me in a state of opening up my heart to the Lord and help me in “Loving to Talk to God” in a deeper conversational way. I just have to remember that prayer is a two-way conversation in the first place.

Thanks for allowing me ramble on about this topic. Do you have anything to add or any perspective on this memory verse today? Leave a comment.

Oh, and if you need a last minute Valentine’s treat idea to share, find God’s Conversation Hearts tags here.

Have a lovely day,
Julia

2022 Bible Memory Challenge

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. So thanks for checking out the Amazon product links. See my advertising policy here.