Personal Prayer develops Our Friendship with the Father

GOD CREATING ADAM.
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"And indeed, what great nation 

has its gods as near as Yahweh our God is to us 

whenever we call to him?" 

- Deuteronomy 4:7

One of the significant distinctions of our religion in comparison with others is God's closeness with us, His people. Since the beginning, God has established friendship with us though we are merely His creatures. Even when our parents disobeyed Him and became slaves to sin, He still kept close watch over them and did not leave them to become like the other creatures who were left on their own to survive. In fact, He even promised a Savior who will redeem mankind from bondage to sin and that Savior is no other than His very own only-begotten Son, who came to become like us in everything, except sin, and has extended His friendship to us if we will only love one another in the manner by which He loved us.

Since God is not physically present among us - for He is pure Spirit first of all - one of the ways by which we can cultivate our personal relationship with Him is through prayer, personal prayer in particular. As we communicate with our loved ones here on earth in order to keep our relationships strong and close even when they're miles away, we also have to start, sustain and strengthen our relationship with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit through prayers, our means of communicating with Him. For prayer is simply communicating with God and like our Lord Jesus Christ who communicated with, that is, prayed to, the Father, we also have to do the same.

His plans to endear Himself to us, His people, can be discerned from these passages from the Old Testament:

With regards to our status as Christians, the New Israel, like the Israel of old, we were redeemed from the slavery to sin and He has done wonders especially through the passion, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ

"And who is like your people, Israel -- the one nation on earth that God went our to redeem as a people for himself, and to make a name for himself and to perform great and awesome wonders by driving out nations and their gods from before your people whom you redeemed from Egypt?" - 2 Samuel 7:23

"And he has raised up for his people a horn, the praise of all his faithful servants, of Israel, the people close to his heart. Praise the LORD." - Psalm 148:14 

"He has done this for no other nation, they do not know his laws. Praise the LORD." - Psalm 147:20

As to His closeness to us which He even emphasized by making our bodies the temples of His Holy Spirit. Being so, we can call upon Him at any time and for whatever purpose. We ought to take advantage of this grace and blessing and

"Seek the LORD while he may be found; call upon him while he is near." - Isaiah 55:6

"The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears them; he delivers them from all their troubles. The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those are crushed in spirit." - Psalm 34: 17-18

"Surely his salvation is near those who fear him; that his glory may dwell in our land." - Psalm 85:9

"The LORD is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth." - Psalm 145:18

In the New Testament on the other hand, the various passages about us being made as children of the Father through His only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ clearly show us that God really wanted to establish an intimate relationship with us and such friendship with Him should also be developed and sustained through constant prayer to Him. For even here on earth, when we stop communicating with our loved ones, at one point our relationships with them wither and die. 

So we have to always pray even if all that we'd have to do is to groan [see Ephesians 6:18; Romans 8:26]. For even if our mouths could not put into words what our hearts wants to say, God already knows after all what we want to tell Him [see Psalm 38:9; Matthew 6:8]. He just wants us to speak to Him for He cares for us so much and He wants us to be close to Him. That's what friends do: communicate with each other and God wants to befriend us, not make us His slaves for if He only wanted us to become slaves, He wouldn't have sent His only-begotten Son after all [see John 15: 12-17].

This is a great blessing: that we are being considered to be His friends. We have to be grateful for this grace and one of the best way to manifest such gratefulness is to constantly pray to Him, to speak to Him. For through this we shall also know more about Him, about our mission, our calling or vocation. 

Let us be truly prayerful.