The Starting line for Prayer

The starting line for prayer is knowing God. Actually, Tyler Stanton phrases it differently: discovering the Father’s love. “The most important discovery you will ever make is the Father’s love, and it’s just that — a discovery.”

Do you know that God loves you and likes you?
Do you believe that God loves you and likes you?

Many of us assume that God exists, but we struggle to believe that the all-powerful and all-knowing God cares about us (especially when we fail Him so often).

The Bible is the story of how much God loves and likes you. From the beginning, every man, woman, and child has rebelled against God, and at every instance God has continued to seek relationship with those who have run off. This comes to a climax at the cross of Jesus, when our Savior willingly endures the punishment we deserve so that we can be accepted by God!

Reflect on this paragraph today:

“I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is that you are loved — loved right now without qualification or restriction, loved unconditionally for who you are, loved in a way you can’t lose. The bad news is that you find it very hard to believe that and even harder to experience it. Your instinct is, and will forever be, to try to drum up your own lovableness, to become lovable in some way you can define and control, to try to become in your own eyes what you already are in God’s. The good news is called grace; the bad news is called sin.”

— Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools by Tyler Stanton, p. 77.