The Father is spirit! He is a real, living person! Man also has a spirit, and thus is capable of a spirit-to-spirit relationship with His Creator. The spirit of man must be involved in true worship. When it is not, it denies the reality of this relationship and of God’s nature. Dead, meaningless worship treats God as if He were dead. Worship in which our living spirits rise to meet their Maker acknowledges that He lives—the great I AM! Treat God as the real Person that He is!
God wants more than just a little thought in our prayers. The foremost command is,
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind (Luke 10:27).
We are to give God all of our being. If that applies anywhere, it surely applies when we pray. For in our prayers we are most conscious of being in the presence of God. There can be no better time to put all our heart, all our soul, all our mind and all our strength into our prayer. If we do not genuinely try to be thoughtful in prayer, where will we ever make the attempt? If our hearts and minds are barren in prayer, where can they ever be fruitful? If we cannot invest energy and effort in prayer, where else will we ever love God with all our might?
Prayer is one of the clearest expressions of our love for God. We would then expect that prayer is one of those places where we most clearly give our all. As we have seen, that conclusion is upheld by the example of Jesus. As we come to share His profound love for the Father, our prayers will reflect the same living relationship.