Series: Hey God Week 1: What Do You Want?: 4/30/06

Hey God – What Do You Want

“For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy.” – St. Thérèse of Lisieux

How many of you have ever made a pact before? An agreement sort of like when you say to someone, “You watch my back and I’ll watch yours.” When you make this pact do you pinky swear? Do you promise to stand by this agreement and let nothing get in the way? Over time so many people, organizations and countries have made pacts, treaties or agreements.
When you get married you make a vow to always love one another and to be with each other through sickness and health. When you join the army you make a promise to serve your country. When you become a priest or a nun you make a vow to serve and love God.
Some of these vows and promises have stayed strong while others failed under things such as greed, lust, envy, and other forms of temptation and sins. If you look around you see so many different examples of covenants, pacts, promises, treaties and agreements. And it’s tough to keep some of these promises but you know there is one promise you can count on and that’s the rainbow. “The rainbow?” you ask. Yes the rainbow.

Genesis 9:17 – God told Noah: “This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all mortal creatures that are on earth.”

A long, long, long, long, long time ago God made a pact with Noah. He vowed to Noah that he would no longer send a flood to destroy the earth but most importantly that God would be connected in our lives. This is when God tells us that he is always going to be there in our lives. So why did God make this pact with Noah? I mean after all he just sent a huge flood to destroy the world right? Well, God saw that Noah was good and that Noah loved God so he wanted to make sure that Noah knew that he would never walk alone. He wanted Noah to know that He would always be by his side. And if Noah wanted to be aware of God’s presence, he needed to pray. And that’s what we are going to talk about for the next three weeks. We are going to talk about prayer and this covenant, this pact, this promise. We are going to talk about how our relationship with God all started with prayer and gets stronger with prayer. For the next three weeks we are going to shout out, “Hey God!” and figure out why, how and when we need to talk to God.
So I’m sure you have a lot of questions and I’m sure you want to know why we have to pray. I’m sure you want to know why you need to say grace before a meal, why you need to say your prayers before bed time and why you need to basically live in prayer. So let’s say, “Hey God why should we have to pray?” Well, the first reason we should pray is because:

1. He Wants To Be With Us.

We pray because God wants to be with us. Let’s look back at what God tells Noah:

Genesis 9:9-10 – See, I am now establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you and with every living creature that was with you:

After God got rid of all the evil that was on earth in the days of Noah he promised Noah to be involved in lives of all humans, but in order to be involved in our lives we have to let him.
Now this is a hard thing for some people to grasp. Some of you might be struggling with letting God in your life because you have a hard time seeing him or hearing him. If this is happening, if you are having a hard time seeing where God is in your life, you probably need to slow down. We live in a world where we are always, busy, busy, busy. Some of you might have busy parents, I know my father was always busy and to tell you the truth it was hard to have a relationship with him because he was always traveling, working, going out, it felt as if he didn’t have a lot of time for me. And see the thing is I wanted to be with him, I wanted to hang with him, but he was too busy. Well, when it comes to God we can be like that too. Sometimes we are too busy for God because of sports, music, art, dance, myspace, IM, email, hanging with friends and going to parties. But if you remember God created us to honor him and they way we honor him is to be with him and the best way to be with God is in prayer. God wants us to pray because he wants us to be with him. God is crying out for you to be with him. It’s not him who abandons us, it’s not him that leaves us alone, it’s us that ignore him, it’s us that try and run away from Him because we let life get busy.
God wants us to pray to him because he wants to be with us, but in order to have a healthy relationship with someone there needs to be communication. If you ever meet Evan one of our maintenance guys and ask him about communication, he’ll tell you, “Communication is the key, communication is for me.” And he couldn’t be more right. Communication is important. And that’s why the second reason as to why we need to pray to God is:

2. He Wants To Talk With Us.

He wants us to know that he is listening.

Psalms 4:4 – Know that the LORD works wonders for the faithful; the LORD hears when I call out.

God hears the cries of everyone and as it says in Psalms He works wonders for the faithful. God listens to everyone, but he is only going to listen to those that want to be with Him. God wants you to pray to Him to let Him know your feelings, to let Him know your sorrows, your burdens and your joys. He wants to be a part of your life. We all know relationships are bad when one person tries to ignore another person. Same thing with God, your relationship will stink if you don’t talk to him. And how do you talk to God? You talk to God through prayer. Next week we are going to talk more about how exactly we need to talk to God, but let’s just focus on why it is important to talk with God.
In Genesis 18:16-33 we come upon a situation where Abraham is talking with God about Sodom and Gomorrah. God feels that there is such grave sin in Sodom and Gomorrah that he needs to go down and destroy the cities. Abraham feels that there are innocent people in Sodom and Gomorrah so he asks God:

Genesis 18:23 – Will you sweep away the innocent with the guilty?

God listens to Abraham and talks with him and after much discussion Abraham is able to talk to God about giving the innocent time to escape and not to be destroyed along with the rest of Sodom and Gomorrah.
This is a perfect example of how God listens to us. Now don’t think that this is an example of how to negotiate with God. God has a plan for us all but if we talk with God he will listen. God heard Abraham’s prayers for the innocent so God spared them all. Abraham was faithful to God, so God was able to see that Abraham’s prayers had good intention. It’s important to pray to God because prayer is a conversation. You aren’t going to understand life, life isn’t going to make sense unless you pray to God and ask him for guidance and understanding. By talking with God we are building a stronger relationship, we are helping ourselves through our faith journey. We are learning more about life.
When we ask for guidance and understanding through prayer it becomes easier for us to see all the blessings in our life. And God wants to know that we see all those blessings. And that brings us to the third reason of why we pray to God.

3. He Wants Us To Love Him.

We pray to thank God for our blessings.

Psalms 95:1 – Come, let us sing joyfully to the LORD

We pray to honor God. Prayer is all about honoring God. It’s all about growing in our faith. In order to fulfill these two purposes we need to pray. God not only wants us to be with him but more importantly he wants us to love him as much as he loves us. If you read:

Psalms 95:7 – For this is our God, whose people we are, God’s well-tended flock.

Psalms tells us that God is our shepherd, God is here to take care of us. God wants to be with us and he wants to take care of us. God isn’t here to make our lives difficult, God isn’t here to play games and frustrate us, God wants to be with us and talk with us because he loves us.
When it comes to prayer we are talking about honoring and worshiping God. If you look back to the first week of our Lenten series, “What’s the Point?” we talked about how we are created to honor and worship God. We are to honor and worship God because he created us, he understands you and I and because He forgives us. When we pray we are connecting with God on those things. When you pray to God like in Psalm 95 and thank Him for creating you and all the beauty around you then you are honoring God. When you pray to God you are opening yourself up to God and allowing Him to help you with his problems. When you pray to God you can give yourself that one on one opportunity to ask God for forgiveness, to tell God you are sorry. When you pray you honor God.
So today we have learned that we should pray because God wants to be with us, that God wants to talk with us and because God loves us. For some of you this comes easy and you can already feel God’s call. If that’s the case then that’s great, but if you still feel as if you are struggling with this and you feel as if you can’t hear God calling you to talk to you and be with and love you, close your eyes and listen. Tonight before you go to bed close your eyes and listen. As the catechism says God is always calling us.

2567 God calls man first. Man may forget his Creator or hide far from his face; he may run after idols or accuse the deity of having abandoned him; yet the living and true God tirelessly calls each person to that mysterious encounter known as prayer. In prayer, the faithful God’s initiative of love always comes first; our own first step is always a response. As God gradually reveals himself and reveals man to himself, prayer appears as a reciprocal call, a covenant drama. Through words and actions, this drama engages the heart. It unfolds throughout the whole history of salvation.

As the Catechism says, God is already calling us, God has already broken the ice. Our first response is by answering him back. So the next time you go to pray close your eyes and listen to God. Close your eyes and listen and if you still have trouble hearing God then say to God, “God I’m hear and I want to listen but I’m having trouble, please clear my mind, heart and soul of any struggles, temptations and worries.”
Remember God is calling and He is always listening.