How Prayer Helps Us Love

This is the Truth Network. Encouraging Prayer. God offers an open invitation for His people to talk with Him at any time about anything. On Encouraging Prayer, Dr. James Banks, author of the bestselling Prayers for Prodigals and many other books on prayer provides weekly biblical insight to help you learn to love to pray.

And now, here's James. So Encouraging Prayer, you think about how prayer helps us love, and it's just really a critical part of my own walk with Jesus is how He, through prayer, helps me love, James. Yeah, for some reason I'm thinking of the old Beatles song, Love, Love, Love. Prayer makes such an amazing difference for love, and I think we miss it, because, you know, sometimes we think of prayer as this sort of rote thing, and what we realize, the more we pray, is that God is at work in a way that I think, almost more than anything else, helps us to love.

Because you know how that is. For example, let's say you're not getting along with someone, and you start to pray about that, and maybe it's not the most nice prayer in the world, and then all of a sudden, you sense the Holy Spirit convicting you, wait a minute, wait a minute. And there's something beautiful in the way God meets us through prayer that helps us to love in the most practical ways.

Yeah, I think about, C.S. Lewis, I think it was, said sometimes we need to get in touch with our inner cesspool to get a good whiff. Like, oh man, that really stinks. You know, I can't necessarily change my heart, Lord, but I know that that's really bitter.

Like, that really hurt. That's not good in there, and I don't know what to do with it, and what a great time to turn your heart towards God and really allow him to get in there and see that and deal with it. Yeah, and think of the difference that makes for our relationships, because we can give him everything, and we can be entirely vulnerable with him.

You're just giving it to Jesus, and he's going to help you sort it out. That's the beautiful thing. Think about what 1 John says, that God shows us how to love. Beloved, let us love one another, for love comes from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. So that's his heart, and that's why we've got to pray, because it helps us draw close to his heart. Oh, I got to tell you, and it helps us love deeper, too. You know, like just yesterday morning, I was praying as I was filling out my Valentine's card for my wife, and in my family, it's sort of a slap in the face if you just sign a card based on what it says on the card.

You have to write, essentially, a book. It's just our culture. I know what the card said, but I want to know how you feel, right? How do I love thee? Let me count away. There you go. And I can finish your Beatles song for you, All We Need Is Love. I can hear it in my ear.

Go ahead. Well, I was just thinking about the difference this can make in our lives with our spouses. You know, the differences can make as you're seeking, really, if you're not married, you're wondering about God's will for a relationship. What's better than going to him in prayer? Or, again, if you are married, how about your in-laws?

Oh, I'm telling you, I'm sure it's an absolute trick bag for many. It surely was for me when my mother-in-law was alive, and loving her well under the circumstances, which were very difficult because there was a lot of dysfunction in her family. And God will walk with you, or if you choose not to, he'll show you.

Right. He'll convict you and work on you through his Spirit. What this means for forgiveness is huge, because it can not only help us forgive things that our spouses have done, or think about how people hold on to the past for years and years. Knowing that we can go to Jesus and be completely safe, and that he is our healer, is just so consequential for our relationships. Think about children in our lives.

You think about your kids or your grandkids. My wife got a text from our grandson. She texted him yesterday and said, Do you know how much I love you and how proud I am of you? And he texted back and said, I love you too. And he said, the Psalm that he had taught her, he said, Every night I pray that Psalm I will lie down and sleep in peace because you are with me.

That's so beautiful. You know, I have a very, very dear friend. And unfortunately, his daughter married somebody that shut off the relationship so that when he had his first grandson, he wasn't actually able to talk to him on the phone, you know, and they lived several states away, and so it was very complicated for him. And he just prayed and prayed like, God, tell me, show me, what can I do to show my grandson that I love him?

What can I do? And God gave him the idea. He'll say it completely came from prayer to start sending him gifts. And interestingly, he sent him a T-shirt with a wolf on it, and it turned out that he and his father would howl like wolves every night, and almost all the gifts that God guided him to send him through prayer really connected with his grandson's heart until the point where actually the family had to call him to tell him, Oh, thank you for this. You see what God did? Yeah, yeah. And that is so important because you think about, again, what you mentioned, the whole ghosting thing.

That happens very frequently, it seems, these days in families. And again, knowing that we are loved by the greatest love of all helps us love, even when, you know, maybe someone is pushing back against us. But this is where, again, we've got to go to the source to get our love, and the way we go to that source is through prayer and, of course, through his word. But if you're reading the word and not praying, what are you doing, you know? You've got to be in that place of just going to Abba Father and letting his love flow through you.

And so it's a beautiful thing. Well, this would be a great time to close us in prayer, James. Lord, help us to love. Help us to be more like you in this. And, Father, I'm not just talking about the times where there's warm, fuzzy feelings.

Yeah, the times as well. Lord, your inspiration to love, that's what we want more than anything else, so that we can love like you. In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. You can hear more from Pastor James by visiting his website, jamesbanks.org, or by visiting Peace Church in Durham, North Carolina. May God bless you and encourage you as you pray. This is the Truth Network.