Encouraging - Shopping List

This neglect of God reveals a basic misunderstanding about prayer. We often treat prayer like a spiritual shopping list. We walk into God’s general store, give a perfunctory nod in His direction, and then proceed to the real reason we came – the grocery list. We spend the bulk of our time listing one request after another, and God Himself takes second place. In fact, this habit of ignoring God suggests that we would prefer to find Him absent from the store so we would not have to bother with Him at all. How easy it is to forget that we are dealing with a divine Person, not a heavenly mail-order catalog. When we focus too much on what we need, we are bound to neglect the One whom we need.

Richard L Pratt Jr., Pray With Your Eyes Open: Looking at God, Ourselves, and Our Prayers (P & R Publishing Company, Phillipsburg, NJ: 1987) p. 20.