Our little girl is almost 4 months old now.  We have had some good times and some bad times when it comes to putting her to bed.  Sometimes we have multiple times in one night.  But the one thing that stays the same every night is that my wife and I want to help her rest, eat and sleep.

As I was putting her to bed last night the thought occurred to me.  We are just like my little girl.  Our loving Daddy, God, wants us to rest in Him.  But just like my her we fight and squirm and try to get away.  Sometimes we just don’t feel worthy of it.  Other times we think we know how to do it on our own.  Or we just want to do something else.  But no matter what the situation is, Daddy knows what’s best for us.  He knows we need to rest in Him and when we don’t we suffer.

Don’t you know he enjoys giving rest to those he loves?

Psalm 127:2

Are you tired?  Worn out?  Hurting?  Wanting?  Rest in your Daddy’s arms.  Don’t worry.  He wants you to.

As I have talked about before, I have a one year Bible that I have been reading through.  Just recently I started reading through David’s psalms.  I have read these tons of times, but something hit me this time a little different.  As you read through them, its great to see that even David had major ups and downs and to see how he handled them.  We all go through those times in life but we don’t all handle it the way he did.  He would talk with God.  Not just praying like we tend to do.  I think in our culture we have trained ourselves to pray (and sometimes rather often) but when we do we are mostly praying the basics (forgive me, thank you, can this happen, prayer request).  I don’t believe that there is anything wrong with that at all, but what I am seeing from the way David prayed was that it was pretty much a constant conversation with God.  It wasn’t just the “ok we just sat down to dinner so we have to pray” prayer.  He prayed all the time.  When I say he prayed I mean prayed, sang, talked, yelled, cried, begged, etc.  

This was kinda a wake up call to me.  I mean, he when from times that he was expressing thanks to expressing grief or pain.  The one that hit me the hardest was one that he was demanding God hold up His end of the bargain.  I’m not saying we should constantly demand things of God, but that maybe David was on to something with this “talk to God no matter what is going on” thing.  I don’t pray like that.  It isn’t a lifestyle like that to me and I think it should be.  Sometimes I do great, but generally I get so caught up in my life and what is going on around me, I forget that God is really the center of it all.  When I don’t realize that, I get onto the detour that takes me in a different direction away from Him.

I want a prayer life not just a prayer time.