The Same God

A while ago, I began to feel a push to cultivate a more consistent and more robust prayer life. As part of this push, I began using my commute to work as a time of prayer. The first day I attempted to do this, I struggled. I hadn’t been turning to God in prayer except during my morning quiet time, and that time was usually short, quick, and to the point. 

 

But now, I was challenging myself to talk to God for a full thirty minutes each morning. As I turned out of my neighborhood, I began to speak, but struggled to get any words out. I realized I was exercising a muscle I hadn’t been using and I was stiff. 

 

But more than that, I realized that since I had previously not been praying regularly, I had been living as if God was not there with me—as if He was not listening to me. And I had almost begun to believe that. How is it that God—the God who I read about in my Bible and heard about in church each Sunday—was there with me in my car listening to the words I was praying? 

 

But that is the heart of our Christian faith: The truth that God is indeed the Creator and Ruler of the universe, but at the same time He cares deeply for us as individuals and wants a relationship with us. 

The God who spoke creation into existence is the same God who speaks to our hearts when we come to Him in prayer. The God who intervened and saved Noah’s family from the waters of the flood is the same God intervenes in our lives when we petition Him. The God who rescued the Israelites from slavery is the same God who delivers us from sin when we go to Him in repentance. 

 

The world now may have changed greatly since the Bible was written, but God is exactly the same. He is in control of the governments and leaders in our day the same way He was in 1 and 2 Kings. He has the power to heal the same way He did in the Gospels or in Acts. 

This same God—full of power, majesty, and glory—is right there with you. “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). This was the promise Christ made to us before He ascended to the Father. He now dwells within us through His Spirit. The Apostle Paul says that he has been crucified with Christ and as a result, Christ lives in him (Galatians 2:20). This is true of all us who have placed our faith in Christ. 

 

Once I began to sit in this truth and really believe it, I realized the huge implications it has for our prayer lives. When we turn to God in prayer we do so through God’s own power and in God’s own Spirit. He is not just some benevolent ruler who allows us to make requests to Him. God has invited us into His very being, and goes with us wherever we go. He is there when we open our Bibles in the mornings. He is there when we drive to work. He is there when we eat our meals, go to church, drop our kids off at school, and lay down to sleep at night. He is there with us always, listening to and responding to our prayers.