Recently when studying Jesus' prayer in John 17, the thought hit me that Jesus was praying about God's interests. It made me ask if I ever do this. There are times when I have asked God to glorify Himself, to reveal Himself and things like this. But what struck me about the prayer was a sense that Jesus was not praying for God's interests for any other reason - not as they have to do with His own (Jesus') plans or hopes. Rather, Jesus was simply aligning His heart with God by praying for God's interests.
To pray for God's interests requires first that one knows God's interests. To know God's interests, one has to really know God Himself, or as Jeremiah said, that a person "understands me and knows me." See how all of this builds - one step on top of the other?
All of this then took me to another place of prayer - and for lack a better way to say it, this other thread is "thinking and thanking." The thought occurred to me that one of the great aspects of prayer is to simply think about God. Yes, to direct my spirit and my mind to think about who God is and make these thoughts intentionally God directed such that they are prayer. In so thinking about God, I can come to no other conclusion except to begin to delight in who God is - what He is like, His personality, His priorities, His character - His Glory. To think about these things is going to make me grateful. I'm going to start thanking Him for who He is and then my prayer is going to turn into a little worship service of gratitude. As I continue to thank Him, my mind is going to be continually stretched to be thinking more about who He is. And the more I think about who He is, yep, the more I'm going to be thanking Him for who He is. So the two are going to propel one another forward in a prayer cycle of higher reaching thoughts and deeper reaching gratitude. For what? For nothing other than God. A beautiful dance and mutual encouragement that comes when God directed prayer is woven in the pattern of thinking and thanking.
