“Do you know the God to whom you are speaking?” How do you envision him as you pray? Do you think of him as so completely occupied with people more important than yourself that he could barely find a spare minute to listen to your little requests? Do you think of him as hearing your tiny voice or you half-muffled whispers and saying, “Good grief. It’s you again. Come back with your prayers when you’ve put your life in order and cleaned up your house and stopped yelling at your kids and when you’ve overcome your struggle with lust and greed and bitterness. I may have some time for you then.”

When people confess that they find prayer boring and uneventful, I often wonder if they really know the One to whom they are speaking. Of course, some push back against that suggestion and say: “Come on, Sam. Be a little more gracious and kind. Of course I know the God to whom I’m speaking. After all, I’m a Christian.” Well, I’m sorry, but that isn’t good enough. A lot of genuine, born-again believers go through their Christian lives largely oblivious to the nature of their God and even more unaware of the supernatural dynamics that occur when God’s people pray.

Let me briefly remind you of a couple of things. First, the God to whom you and I pray is the God portrayed for us in Revelation 4-5. When you pray you are speaking to the God whose majesty is so unfathomable that the four living creatures never cease, day or night, to cry out, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!” (Rev. 4:8). This is the God whose beauty and power compel the 24 elders to continually “fall down before him” and “cast their crowns before the throne” (Rev. 4:10).

This is the God who, they declare, is “worthy . . . to receive glory and honor and power” because he “created all things” (Rev. 4:11). This is the God whose love for you and me was so intense and so relentless and so measureless that he sent his Son to be slaughtered on a cross so that we would receive forgiveness of each and every sin we might ever commit and be granted entrance into the glories of the New Heaven and New Earth.

This is the God who, according to Psalm 115:3, “is in the heavens” and “does all that he pleases.” This is the God whose “dominion is an everlasting dominion, and” whose “kingdom endures from generation to generation” (Dan. 4:34b). When you pray you are talking about the God who “does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, ‘What have you done?’” (Dan. 4:35).

This is the God “who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think” (Eph. 3:20).

So let me ask you again, “Do you know the God to whom you are speaking?” How do you envision him as you pray? Do you think of him as so completely occupied with people more important than yourself that he could barely find a spare minute to listen to your little requests? Do you think of him as hearing your tiny voice or you half-muffled whispers and saying, “Good grief. It’s you again. Come back with your prayers when you’ve put your life in order and cleaned up your house and stopped yelling at your kids and when you’ve overcome your struggle with lust and greed and bitterness. I may have some time for you then.”

Do you think of God like the Santa Claus at the local shopping mall, who has to be paid to pretend that he enjoys listening to the requests of squirming little kids? Do you see yourself as one of those children, lined up perhaps for hours waiting for your precious 30 seconds of time on his lap? Do you think talking to God is like calling your bank or credit card company and hearing only a recorded voice who tells you that you’re the 37th person waiting for one of only a handful of operators who will try to get to you in about 45 minutes?

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