prayer

Honestly, I've always thought I had a pretty decent prayer life. For over 15 years, I've nearly always had a designated "quiet time". But a few things have come up in the past few months that have me reconsidering what I've been doing.
For one thing, I started to lead a "Moms In Touch" prayer group for our homeschool support group. Moms In Touch (www.momsintouch.org) is an international group of mothers with one goal: to spend one hour a week devoting themselves to prayer for our children. When we lived in Biloxi one of my friends started a MIT group for her school; I recall thinking what a fantastic idea! So when the opportunity arose here, I took it, knowing that it was God's call for me to begin to honestly pray for my children. It has been eye opening and humbling. I realize that while I feel like I have been praying for my children all along, it has oftentimes become rote prayers, me saying the same thing over and over. Now I am praying specific scripture for the kids, as well as praying for their character development and for godly virtues. It has been life changing.
The other thing that has changed my prayer life is the study by Kay Arthur, "Lord, Teach Me to Pray: practicing a powerful pattern of prayer. In this study, Arthur reminds us that when we come to the Father, we are coming into the presence of a holy God. She reminds us of Nahab and Abihu in the very first lesson, the sons of Aaron who go into the tabernacle to offer sacrifices -- but they do it in a way that God had *not* commanded them to do it, and they were immediately struck dead. God reminds Moses that "I am Holy, and I must be regarded as Holy."
I think of so many times that I approach prayer with the mindset that I am just pulling up a chair with Jesus and chatting about things. While Jesus *is* my friend, and I can tell Him anything, I needed to be reminded that my God is a holy God and MUST be regarded as such. I need to view my quiet times as times of coming into the presence of God, not just me having a cup of coffee and reading/journaling/praying because it's something I enjoy doing for me. It is *so* not about me!