I Must Pray.

I borrowed "the furious longing of God" by Brennan Manning from my friend Hannah, and let me just say that after reading only 24 pages, I already have many quotes from this book that I will remember for my entire life. The one that really stuck out to me wasn't all that profound or something revolutionary, but just something that I had never actually put together as a tangible thought. Manning said, "In a significant interior development, you will move from I should pray to I must pray."

WHOA. Or at least that was my reaction after reading that sentence! How true is it that for many of us we pray because we should, because we know God wants to hear from us, because we know it pleases Him, or because we want to be a good Christian and talk to our Dad. How many times in my life have I approached praying as something that I must do to get through the day. To be completely honest, there are days when I wake up at 9:06 for a New Testament test at 9:35 and barely have enough time to shoot God a quick prayer to thank Him for the day, tell Him I love Him, and of course ask for a little help on the test. (obviously, that scenario happened this week :/). And I made it through that day. I made it through without ever coming before God without any other distractions and I made it through just fine. But how much better could it have been if I had surrendered that day to God because I knew that was a must.

But there have been times, within the past few months even, where prayer was the ONLY thing that was going to get me through. It was an absolute necessity to hit my knees and cry out to God because He was the only person or thing that was going to provide me with comfort. Those times, as bad as they feel physically, are the most precious times I ever get to spend with my creator. Whenever no one else will even come near helping me as hard as they may try; not my friends, not my family, but only Him..only He could brush off my knees and send me on my way to do His work.

But, isn't that how I should approach each day? Not just getting up and praying because it starts my day off great (which it does), but actually realizing that He is the only reason I'm going to experience that particular day, He is the only thing that is going to get me through that day, and He is my only "MUST" that day. Why do I wait for bad times in my life to approach Him as a must..isn't He my only source of happiness too?