Effective communication is so revered in our society that it is widely considered to be an art form. It’s a skill that is coveted by most because there can be no doubt that it opens doors of opportunities. It allows us to exceed our expectations. Job interviews are mastered, relationships are successful, and advancement is propelled exponentially by effective communication, so it behooves us all to do our best to communicate well. We may not reach the level of comfortably speaking publicly before hundreds of people, but we should at least endeavor to express ourselves in a manner where our best intentions for ourselves and others are clearly understood.
Most of us, especially in the professional world, hold to society’s benchmarks regarding effective communication. If we desire any level of success in life for ourselves, we do our best to meet societal standards for effectively communicating. For instance, we don’t walk into interviews refusing to answer questions. We do our best to answer them in a way that proves our ability to handle the job. Many single people are seeking to partner with a compatible and God-loving partner, but they wouldn’t entertain a second date if the person had absolutely nothing meaningful to say on the first one. We seldom think about it, but the expectations surrounding effective communication are deeply woven in our psyche. Therefore, it should come to no surprise that we need to learn to effectively communicate with God.
God is Holy Our Heavenly Father is holy, holy, holy. There is none like Him, and no one will ever compare. He is everything, the Most High, the Almighty God, yet many of us never consider that our communication to and with Him is the most important of all. When it comes to the interviewer, the potential partner, and those we love most, we endeavor to present our best. It goes without saying that we should never attempt to present God with anything less.
Hebrews 12:28-29(NLT) tells us, “28 Since we are receiving a Kingdom that is unshakable, let us be thankful and please God by worshiping him with holy fear and awe. 29 For our God is a devouring fire.” God is magnificent beyond magnificence, and His Word is wonderful. It behooves us to focus all our attention on Him as we prepare ourselves for prayer and fellowship. Hebrews 12:28-29 makes it clear that we can’t play at worshiping and pleasing God any more than we can play at the reverence He requires for prayer. Our whole hearts must be in it. They must be focused totally on God as we have awe for His deity and sovereignty.
Our Godly awe is a real, loving, admiration and devotion for God through the person of Jesus Christ, and it transforms us. It should transform our prayer lives as well. Reverence for God changes the way we think and act. Hebrews 12:29 tells us He is a devouring—consuming fire, and this is an aspect of God’s nature that should stop us in our tracks. His heart burns for us and His love for us is unquenchable; it’s unconditional and unlimited. Some of us have put on such a pretense in our relationship with God, that we can no longer tell if we’re actually sincere when we approach Him. Our minds are all over the place when it’s time to pray, and we’re challenged when it comes to giving Him the reverence He deserves. Praying to encounter His awesome and amazing presence in truth should be first on our prayer requests.
Prayer is for those who long to connect with God, and He meets us in this place of longing, but make no mistake, God requires that we know who He is. Exodus 3:14 (ESV), tells us, “God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I am has sent me to you.’” Jesus Christ tells us in John 4:24(ESV) that, “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” John 3:16 tells us that He loved the world so much that He gave His one and only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, and whoever believes on Christ will not perish but will have the gift of eternal life. 1John 4:16(ESV) says, “God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” We can clearly see from His Word that God is too wondrous, too overwhelmingly good, powerful, intelligent, and loving to fit inside our little boxes.
He tells us in Isaiah 55:8-9(ESV), “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” We cannot fathom the totality of all that God is, but we can and must reverence Him with all that we are, and this is the way we must approach Him in our prayer lives.
Transformed by His love
God will accept us as we are. Jesus Christ invites us in Matthew 11:28-30 (NLT), “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.” Most of us are in rough shape when we come to the Father’s throne of grace, but we will not leave His throne in the same shape we were in before we came.
Effective prayer brings us in the presence of God, and His love will transform us. If we have the heart of earnestness that honors Him, our Christ-like personality will increase and so will our reverence and awe of Him. It’s not about being perfect, none of us are, but we must remember that God’s goal is that we grow in Christ increasingly, and we are being perfected in Christ every day. This is the reality of our spiritual identity, and when we come before God, He wants us to know who He is and who we are through Him.
Prayer is given to us by our Heavenly Father to effectively communicate in support of our relationship with Him. Prayer’s effectiveness isn’t based on the clothes we wear or the perfection of our words. It’s based on the heart we have for God, our faith in Him, and the reverence we demonstrate as we come into His presence. We can’t think that prayer is just a way to receive the things we want. God wants relationship with us, and relationship is a two-way street. We must make it our business to understand our awesome and amazing God through His Word, and we must thank Him for this most sacred and holy communication. He has clothed us in Christ with all we need to reverence Him with a continual mood of prayer, and this is a garment we should never take off. ■
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (ESV) is adapted from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. All rights reserved.
“In Awe and Reverence of God”, written for Springfield Fellowship © 2023. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.
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