prayer

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about prayer. Subconsciously, we seem to have this idea that prayer is about changing God's mind, or maybe about convincing God to do things the way we'd like to. We know that part of prayer is about what God wants, but there seems to be a bit of a mentality that I've seen (especially around church prayer meetings - not as much at our church, thankfully!) that if we do things right (get enough people coming, pray for long enough, hard enough, etc), then God will act.

I'm sure you've never heard (or prayed) things like "God, we just (why do we use "just" so much when we pray?) pray that you'll turn up tonight", "God, we pray you'll do this or that".

I'm actually starting to think that prayer is a lot more about me, than God. Sound ego-centric? Maybe. But what if I approach prayer from the perspective that I'm not trying to convince God, but trying to get his heart. In praying for someone I know who's sick, I'm trying to understand that God cares even more about that person than I do, I'm asking God to help me bring healing and restoration to them when I see them next. In praying for a situation, I'm trying to find out what God is thinking about/doing in that situation. In confession, I'm not telling God anything he doesn't know, but being honest with myself about my sin, and understanding how amazing it is that God forgives me.

It might seem obvious, but I don't hear many people talking about it, and I hear even less people praying like it. I guess it comes back to the core reason why I pray - do I pray to change God's mind, or to get God's heart?