Dear Father God...

This week I had a bit of a revelation about prayer...
I'm currently reading the book of Daniel due to various hints and God sort of going through everything 'READ THIS BOOK'...you can't ignore something like that. So I've been reading it and I came to Daniel 9. Daniel is praying for the city, for the people of Jerusalem. God has given Daniel a vision which is not favourable to the people so Daniel seeks the Lord. As I read the passage there are a number times that Daniel says 'because of your righteousness do XYZ....' like in verse 16:

 "O Lord, according to all Your righteousness, I pray, let Your anger and Your fury be turned away from Your city Jerusalem

and it struck me, not only here but in various points in scripture where people say to God, "because you are this  make this happen'...Personally I always thought that was a little arrogant (but perhaps that is more to do with my walk with God than anything else) and I have also heard it said that we do that to remind God about who He is. That never sat right with me...God sitting in heaven and then someone praying, 'Lord you are merciful there have mercy...' then a lightblub appearing above God's head *ding* and him saying, 'Oh yeah-I completely forgot I was like that, thanks for reminding me-I'm able to sustain the universe in the palm of my hand but I can't actually remember who I am...thanks '...doesn't quite sound right does it??
So I started thinking then, 'why do it?' Then God showed me, its not for His benefit, its for ours...
As we pray, we remind ourselves about who God is and therefore our faith is increased because we don't have to think 'is this in Your will Lord?', if we pray, 'Lord you are our provider' or 'It says in Your word that You will never leave the righteous forsaken or their children begging for bread...' then we KNOW that it IS His will because he has said so in His word. Now this is not to say that He will answer the way we expect Him to or even the way we want Him to at times but we can know that this is something he cares about and as part of His character.
There's a couple of implications - do we know God well enough to pray like this. This Christian life is a relationship not a religion. In order to pray in a way that is reminding myself about who God is I need to know Him well enough in order to remind myself...I can't say to God 'you are X,Y,Z' if I don't know what they are. It means we must spend time with Him, quality time with Him, communicating with Him. Its like in any relationship, friendship etc unless you spend time with the other person, talking with them, sharing with them, listening to them you won't get to know them.
We NEED to spend time in the Bible - God has told us who is through this word-look at Jesus...He IS the Word. At new year my brother spoke at his church and he challenged us to read the gospels again with fresh eyes-get to know Jesus again, as you do that you will know what God is like.Then you may also discover you are the answer to some of your own prayers...but that's another blog for another time...