Prayer reveals the love of your life

Tonight I will have the privilege of leading a group from church in a time of prayer for spiritual renewal. In preparing, I read a quote from Jonathan Edwards on praying for the Spirit. I won't share the quote here because the language is a bit dated, but here is the general idea:

In a sermon preached in 1740, Jonathan Edwards distinguished between two kinds of prayer: prayer for temporal blessings (food, clothing, health, career success, etc.), and prayer for spiritual blessings (growth in holiness, God's love shed abroad in our hearts, having the light of God's face shining upon us).

Edwards says that almost everyone seeks the former with great frequency and fervency. When we have a physical need, we are quick to pray, and passionate in our praying. But when it comes to praying for the Spirit, for seeking a deeper love for Christ and a sweeter grasp of what it means to be God's child, we pray infrequently and often are passionless when we do pray.

According to Edwards, the fact that we pray so much more instinctively and passionately for money, health, family, social status, etc. more than we pray for the glory of God to shine upon us and others, reveals what our hearts really love most deeply.

In other words, if you want to know your heart's deepest treasure, take a close look at your prayer life. What you pray for most passionately is what you love most deeply. And what you love most deeply is your real god, no matter who you are actually praying to.

That was a challenging word for me today, but one I am grateful to God for.