Confident Prayers -Anna Grace Gay
This reading by St. Thomas Aquinas has been one of my favorite readings thus far in the semester. I really enjoyed the format and the amount of truth that was packed throughout the entire reading. In the Summa Theologica, I specifically loved the explanation of the Lord's prayer. I felt as though I was getting several miniature devotions throughout the entire reading! One of the five qualities of prayer that was my favorite was that our prayers must be confident. Hebrews 4:16 says, "Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need." That verse, along with the statement that prayer must be confident, is such a powerful reminder that I often lose sight of. When we pray, we are coming before the creator of the entire universe to ask of something. That means nothing we could ever ask is too big for our God. We know that for a prayer to be answered it must be apart of God's plan and something that He has willed for our lives but we should still pray boldly to our Savior. Those prayers we pray to Him should be whatever is on our heart, the good and the bad. We have been told in God's word that we will face trials in this life. But we can have peace as we go through those trials because Jesus is right there with us and He understands. He is 100% God but He is also 100% man as He walked the earth and He knows what it feels like to have the struggles we experience in this world on a personal level. Every heartache, every tear, every painful situation, every bad thing we experience: God knows what we are going through and He will hear our prayers when we call. Our God expects us to approach His throne in prayer with confidence. Pray for the health concern that can only be healed through a miracle, pray for the job no one thinks you will get, and pray for the lost soul that seems so far from saving. God knows we will have times of need and He wants us to approach Him in confidence knowing that He can do anything. Matthew 19:26 reminds us of this truth, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." Approach God in prayer with complete confidence to pray those big prayers and see what He will do.
I commented on AnnaKate and Moriah's posts.
I commented on AnnaKate and Moriah's posts.
I agree. I felt that I was getting mini-devotions too reading the explanation of the Lord’s Prayer. It also helped me understand and grasp the idea of prayer all together. Nothing by no means is too big for God. When we come to him we should be humble and praise him for everything he has done. It doesn’t have to be perfect but He still understand because he knows what we need. Originally I didn’t believe that confidence was required for prayer because I felt it contradicted the idea of being humble. When you say we are to approach Him in confidence it made me realized it means we should be confident in God and what He can do not necessarily ourselves.
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