The Great Communicator

As I was preparing the Sunday school lesson for last Sunday, I was struck by a phrase in one of the books. The author called God "The Great Communicator." Think of a couple of scriptures:

• In Genesis, God created the world by speaking it into being. And God said "let there be...and there was...and it was good."
• In John, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
• In Revelation, John's vision begins with him hearing Jesus speaking.

We just finished a prayer vigil at our church. Forty hours of prayer. Why is that important? It really seems to be a special event in our touch -- touching those who participate.

Why is it important that we pray? We pray, I think, because Jesus prayed. If prayer was important to him, then we can rest assured that it should be important to us.

God is the great communicator. We are called to be like God -- we are made in his image and we should strive to share the same priorities that he has. If prayer was a priority for Jesus, and he is a reflection of God's nature, then we need to make it important in our lives.

How do you develop a relationship with someone? How do you maintain a relationship with someone? I've been close friends with people in the past, and as time goes by, we lose touch with each other. If we don't talk, or don't write, then it becomes difficult to maintain that connection.

The same is true with the Great Communicator, I think. Prayer is the best way to develop and maintain a relationship with God. When we stop doing it, we find that we lose touch.

We pray because he tells us to. We pray because he shows us how. We pray, because without prayer, we lose touch.

Prayer changes things. Most of all, I think, it changes our relationship with God. It creates that relationship.

Image: The altar during our church's prayer chapel.