*note: I love this picture that Gareth painted a while ago… I saw him work on it. It was amazing. Later it transformed into a special birthday gift for his Grandfather – “Gong gong”*
“God is big enough to handle all the mixture in our lives, and he will purify the motives. And, if God doesn’t hear the prayer of the sinner, we’re in trouble, aren’t we? No, God hears. There is a sense in which it’s like a little child that can never draw a bad picture. A child of God can’t utter a bad prayer. We come with our ego-centered, greed-motivated prayers, and God looks at that and says, “That’s my child. That’s my child who has chosen to be with me. It’s a beautiful prayer.”
Now, God will not leave us there, but he receives us there. God works with us — enters the relationship; we’re building a history with him. That’s how the motive, that’s how the problem of sin, that’s how all those things begin to be dealt with in time. We just come as we are. You know that old song, Just As I Am. Well, that’s the way it is. We’re not only saved by grace, we live by grace, and we pray by grace. God loves us so much that he receives us just as we are, and he loves us so much that he won’t leave us where we are. “ ~ Richard J. Foster in Hearing The Heartbeat of God