In all of my years in youth ministry, the most frequent questions I was asked, especially among senior high school students, were about prayer. In particular, students would ask, “How do I know if God is speaking to me?” I was always amazed that young people were inclined to seek answers about prayer. In their questions, it was very evident that there was a true and genuine desire to discover the power of prayer. In order to answer the how, we must first answer the why. Why does God speak to us?
I found myself asking a lot of the ‘how’ questions was when I was at university. I was studying and working full time and felt that I had very little time for myself, let alone any time for God. I know that my experience is not an isolated one. As a student, there is the desire to study well. On top of that, there is a deep need of community and friendship. As you get to the end of your time as a student, questions of discernment begin flooding into your mind, “What am I going to do after university?” So where can you fit God in the midst of it all?
As a student, I picked up Time for God as a way of answering this question. What I wanted were clear and practical answers, but what I read there helped changed the way I looked at prayer for the rest of my adult life.
What matters in prayer is not so much what we do, but what God does in us
As I read along, I became deeply humbled by these words. God does not come to me because I ask him but because he is God and he loves me. On that same note, he does not only come to me when I make time, but he is constantly trying to pursue me even when my time is occupied by something else.
Over the next few weeks in The Udisciple Podcast, we will delve more deeply into the book, Time for God. Hopefully through that study we are all encouraged to learn for ourselves that
Mental prayer is the source of true happiness. Whoever practices it faithfully will not fail to “taste and see that the Lord is good”
Jacques Philippe, Time for God
Andrew Lemalu, Discipleship Officer
