“…and God help us to have a safe trip to the ‘cookie jar house’ and to our neighbors’ house.” For some reason, this is the prayer of my son, Jude, every time he prays now. The “cookie jar house” is his MeMaw and PaPaw’s house in Huntersville, NC which we have not been to in well over a month, and before the last visit, it had been even longer. We have never been to our neighbors’ house to actually visit the house, and I’m not exactly sure what Jude thinks is going to get us in the few hundred yards that separate the homes, but these two trips are his fervent prayers. Isn’t it wonderful to hear children pray!
My other son, Jackson, our big boy now, prays with conviction in his tone and He is beginning to understand the basic doctrines of the Bible. Now his prayers, at times, put Daddy to shame, but he still prays them in a simple trust in God. Maybe it is because the children do not have all of the knowledge that garbles up in adult minds, but they make praying seem simple.
Andrew Murray, the former South African pastor, wrote the prayer in Lord, Teach Us To Pray:
“Teach me to draw near to God in prayer under the deep impression of my ignorance and my having nothing in myself to offer Him, and at the same time of the provision Thou, my Savior, makest for the Spirit’s breathing in my childlike stammerings. I do bless Thee that in Thee I am a child, and have a child’s liberty of access; that in Thee I have the spirit of Sonship and of worship of truth. Teach me, above all, Blessed Son and the Father, how it is the revelation of the Father that gives confidence in prayer; and let the infinite Fatherliness of God’s heart be my joy and strength for a life of prayer and of worship. Amen.”
“I do bless Thee that I am a child,” wrote Murray, reminding us all that our prayers, to the Father, sound just as much like trips to cookie jar houses and neighbors as my son’s prayers do to me. However, just as I rejoice in the fact that my son is praying, even so, the Father rejoices when His children pray, regardless of the feebleness of the prayers. We can come boldly before the throne of God, not because of our powerful prayers, but because of our powerful Advocate. “And who is our Advocate?” you may ask. We have God as our Advocate. The Father pities us as fathers on earth pity their children (Psalm 103:13) when we come to Him in feebleness and frailty. The Son sits at the Father’s right hand interceding for His “friends,” His brothers or sisters, fellow-heirs with Himself (Heb.7:25), us; and the Spirit also makes intercession for us, as we come to the Father (Rom.8:26). All of a sudden, our cookie jar prayers are turned to the great, glorious anthems of praise heard throughout the halls of heaven, and we magnify God in our prayers, not because we are capable, but because we have an Advocate.
May we come before the throne today, and cry out in prayers to God. Do not fear that your prayer will be mocked or shunned, for if “God be for you” in this prayer endeavor, “who can be against you.”
