Daily Devotional For Sunday, June 29, 2025
It’s Sunday. I pray you are going to be in the Lord’s house today to worship Him. We are looking at what it means to follow the Lord. One of the ways that we do this is through prayer. Many people have the wrong idea of prayer. They see prayer as where we bring our concerns to God and His job is to answer them. They pray, “Lord, I have this and this and this I need You to answer.” They see prayer like a slot machine. They put a prayer in and God rewards. Prayer is far more than this and I think this is the reason most Christian are not prayer warriors. The primary purpose of prayer is to create intimacy with God and to have communion with Him.
When we make prayer a “To Do List” for God and He answers, we are glad. But when He doesn’t, we are confused and sometimes even angry. In the Sermon On the Mount Jesus said this to the people listening to Him in Matthew 6:8, “Your Father knows what you need before you ask Him” (NASB). Unlike us in a prayer circle, God is not up in heaven with a pen and piece of paper or with some digital device writing down our prayer requests. He already knows that our needs are even before we do. God is not sitting on His throne waiting to find out what our needs are, He already knows. Prayer is more than informing God of something that He already knows. So, this means prayer is more than this.
The purpose of prayer is not to exchange information, but to experience intimacy and transformation. This is why Jesus tells us what He does in Matthew 6:6, “But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you” (NASB). We live in a culture where we are having to multitask all the time. Jesus says you can’t do that when you pray. Therefore, get away. Find a secluded spot. Turn off everything. Eliminate all distractions so that you can sit in the presence of God the Father. If we all did this, this would make our prayer lives so meaningful and relevant.
When we are alone with the Father, things happen that cannot happen any other time. What is that? Joyful intimacy. This intimacy cannot be experienced with all the noise and distractions around us. It cannot be experienced if our minds are attempting to multitask. Prayer is what I call an experience of singularity – just God and you and nothing else. David writes this in Psalm 63:1, 5-6:
“You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek You; I thirst for You, my whole being longs for You, in a dry and parched land where there is no water . . . (5) I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods; with singing lips my mouth will praise You. (6) On my bed I remember You; I think of You through the watches of the night” (NIV).
One of the results of having this kind of intimacy is that we become fully aware of our sins. This creates remorse, sorrow and repentance. Even the smallest “sin” cannot and will not be tolerated in the presence of a holy and perfect God. We realize and tremble knowing in His presence our sin is an abomination to God. In this intimacy, we do not minimize our sin, we do not rationalize our sin and we do not excuse our sin. We do not get defensive and play the “victim” card.” We say as David did in 2 Samuel 12:13, “I have sinned against the Lord” (NIV). We are like Isaiah in the Temple in Isaiah 6:5, “‘Woe to me!’ I cried. ‘I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty’” (NIV). We are like Ezra in Ezra 9:6, “I am too ashamed and disgraced, my God, to lift up my face to you, because our sins are higher than our heads and our guilt has reached to the heavens” (NIV).
Then our hearts are overwhelmed with the joy of the promise of Romans 8:1, “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (NIV). Like a geyser, gratitude bursts from our hearts to the Lord because we can look into the eyes of the Father with our shame and guilt, knowing He has forgiven us due to His grace and mercy. We realize and confess what is written in God’s word in Isaiah 64:6, “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away” (NIV). We are aware where we would be apart from Christ and where we will be in Him.
Thus gratitude, thanksgiving, and appreciation burst from us to the Father and then we can come to Him with our requests. We share our prayer concerns with the Father not like a text or email, where we are sharing information, but because we are trusting our Father to provide as He sees best. We willingly pray as Jesus, “Not My will, but Your will be done” (Luke 23:42). And because we trust God’s Word, we will pray as Job in Job 1:21, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, And naked I shall return there. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord” (NASB). In this private posture before the Lord we experience intimacy with the Father and His pleasure.
Assignment: What in your life does God call sin that you call it something else. What in your life does God call sin that you excuse it, rationalize it and justify it? Are you as desperate for intimacy with God as David in Psalm 42:1, “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God” (NIV)? Do you see prayer more as an exchange and sharing of information as a time to be fully exposed, naked before the Lord so that being fully exposed creates this intimacy with God? Why or why not? On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest, how would you rate your intimacy with the Father? Why? How do you think God the Father would rate it? Why? If there is a difference, why is that? What needs to be done to shorten that difference and discrepancy?
Scripture To Meditate On: Psalm 119:131, “I open my mouth and pant, longing for your commands” (NIV).
Prayer To Pray: “Thank You for Your desire to have intimacy, a sinner. I do not want to rush my time with You. I want to long for You as a thirsty deer longs to have its thirst quenched. I want more than information; I want transformation brought about by intimacy. Help me Lord with this. I love You. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”
I love you Southside! – Pastor Kelly