PRAY

I'll be honest, I was never one for setting New Year's Resolutions.  I might have made an attempt when I was younger, but would usually fail within the first week or two...  I'm sure there are many who successfully set reasonable, achievable goals at the beginning of the new year, keeping them throughout the year, growing as individuals.  I admire that kind of focus and determination.

I believe those who are successful at achieving their goals have a true passion for what they are seeking to accomplish; something they truly want deep down to their core...


As Believers, we have Spirit-given, God-glorifying goals written on our hearts; goals that were prepared in advance for us to accomplish...

For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, 

which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Ephesians 2:10

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,

 goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control;

Galations 5:22-23

This side of Heaven, we will continually battle sin, temptation and SELF, which certainly can make it hard to walk in obedience.  Our fruit basket falling short...

Those God-given goals are surely the desire of our hearts to live out, yet we can miss the mark almost on a daily basis, as we succumb to SELF.

For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin. 

For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what

 I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. 

Romans 7:14-15

As I ponder these things, I think of the many blog posts I have read where fellow bloggers have chosen their "word for the year".  I had never heard of this before until I began blogging.  

I find this approach appealing as it seeks the Holy Spirit for this very word to focus on throughout the year; a word that ultimately cultivates an area of our spiritual walk; bringing into daily practice one, a few or even all of those God-glorifying goals written on our hearts.

So I set out to pray, asking the Lord what word I should focus on this year.  (In the back of my mind, before I even prayed about it, I was thinking the word was going to be "obey".)  But I still wanted to pray about it to be sure...

The next morning I received an email from a dear sister-in-the-Lord which contained a devotional about prayer.  Later that day, my Iphone alerted me that Beth Moore was on Periscope.  I was so excited to watch Beth Moore on Periscope, live and in the moment! Beth's subject for that session - prayer.

It was then that I knew that between my sweet friend's email to me earlier in the day and Beth Moore's Periscope session, that the Lord had answered my prayer and provided my word for 2016 - PRAY.

"Prayer is the exercise of drawing on the grace of God."

- Oswald Chambers

The action of prayer fills us with the grace of God which moves in us to accomplish the goals He has already written on our hearts...

My prayer life had been sorely lacking in the last year or so... resulting in a spiritual life that was not fully operating through the grace of God, but was sputtering...

I was faithfully in the Word and would indeed pray for guidance and insight as I composed my blog posts, but that is where my prayer life ended.  Yes, I would grab moments here and there to pray, but they were rushed and I confess, not as heart-felt as they should have been...  I was not dedicating time for prayer; only Bible reading...

The thing is, we can spend time in the Word, but without prayer, it's like having a car without any gas in the tank.  Without gas in the tank, the car sputters and then dies; it can't be driven.  Without prayer to fill us with the grace of God, we can't move forward in the knowledge we have gained through His Word to walk in obedience; our spiritual lives become stagnant.



During my Christian life, I have indeed had rich seasons of prayer.  One of my first approaches was to have a topic of prayer for each day of the week, ie. Monday - family, Tuesday - Missions, Wednesday - Church, etc., etc.  In another season of prayer, I created Scripture prayers for my family members and myself.  This was a wonderful season, life having slowed down considerably, hours devoted to prayer.

And then there were seasons when dedicated, consistent prayer were virtually non-existent...

Having recently come out of such a season, the Lord has shown me great mercy,  not only did He answer my prayer for a word for 2016, He used Beth Moore's Periscope session to provide valuable tools to revive my prayer life.

I was certainly weak in the discipline of prayer,  and when I did pray, I rarely prayed for my own spiritual walk, for help to obey, nor did I consistently pray for needs that fell outside of my own family...  My prayer life needed a serious overhaul.  The wisdom of Beth Moore  just so happened to address all of these areas.

God is so good!  He knows exactly what we need to accomplish all that He calls us to do!

So, starting on January 1st, I began to make prayer a priority, once again.

Rather than go through step by step what Beth Moore shared, I will tell you about how it looks in my life and the benefits I am already reaping, in the hopes that it might help any of you who are struggling to make time for prayer or to even pray.

I have tried all different times of prayer, morning, afternoon, before bed; all of them worked for that season, but I have found, now that I have returned to morning prayer, that when I pray and do Bible time before I get out of bed in the morning, that is the absolute best time for me,  setting my day off filled with God's grace through prayer and His Word moving me to walk in obedience throughout the day.

So, every morning I begin with confession and move on to thanksgiving and praise to the Lord.

I then set out to read through a chapter of the Bible, in the sequence I am currently reading in, first asking the Holy Spirit to help me pray through the chapter.  I begin to read the verses, and as the Holy Spirit leads, I write out in a prayer journal prayers prompted by God's Word.  The amazing thing is I have found that those prompted prayers, have led me to pray for my own spiritual walk, and not only the needs of my family, but I am finding myself praying for issues outside of my own personal sphere, for those suffering with addiction, abuse, to world issues, missions, the church, the spread of the Gospel, etc., etc.!  The two areas of prayer I was the most weak in, I am now finding so much to pray about in tandem with reading God's Word!

I want to stop here to speak a bit more about prayer journaling.

I have tried to journal my prayers in the past, but it never lasted more than a week.  Added to my lack of dedication, I was concerned about having very personal prayer requests written down for confidentiality reasons of those who I was praying for and even for my own privacy.  But when Beth shared about how she journaled her prayers prompted by Bible reading, I LOVED that idea!  And it has already proven to be so edifying and helpful!  I have actually stopped using a devotional to allow the Holy Spirit to speak to me personally through chapter and verse.  That is not to say I will never use a devotional again or that there is anything wrong with using devotionals.  Other writers insights to chapters of the Bible are incredibly edifying and helpful to spiritual development.  This is more to allow myself to hear from God as I start out praying through chapters of the Bible.

I also want to stop and speak about how this approach has changed how I assimilate knowledge from the Bible.

Journaling prayers prompted by chapter and verse has enriched my Bible reading time incredibly!  I am gaining so much more insight into what I have read than I feel I ever did before! As I go about my day, these insights directly help me in areas of obedience that I need to work on.  I am more intentional about serving God rather than self .

After writing prayers in my prayer journal, I lift up those requests that are very personal to me.   I will walk around the house and stop at different rooms to pray specific requests for the ones who reside in those rooms.   For those prayers that I am most passionate about, my walking pace seems to increase, showing the fervency of the prayer.  These approaches have really helped me to focus.

I can't even express adequately how much my prayer life and spiritual walk have changed for the better in just the ten days I have been practicing this manner of praying.   I find myself looking forward, with anticipation, to my time in prayer with the Lord every morning!  The Lord is blessing me with grace upon grace through prayer.

Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may 

receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

Hebrews 4:16 

Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and 

unsearchable things you do not know.’

Jeremiah 33:3

I am so thankful that my first year of choosing a word happened to be PRAY.  (But as you all have now seen, for me it was a most necessary word at this point in time.)  For from prayer, the fruits of the spirit grow, obedience flourishes, and God is glorified.

I am hopeful that 2016's word will create a lifelong habit of focused, consistent prayer.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You might be wondering how long it takes for me to pray using the approach I described.  It seems to consistently be a half hour.  But that half hour is full of quality, focused prayer.  (In the past, I would set out to pray, but then have an "ooo shiny" moment and get easily distracted so that my prayers ended up being a lot of words, taking a lot of time, but lacking sincerity.)  

I know that many of you are in a season where it is hard to find even a half hour to pray, but be encouraged that any prayer, that is lifted up in all earnestness, no matter how little time it takes, is received as a sweet smelling aroma to our God.

The Lord meets us where we are at

"You may pray for an hour and still not pray.

You may meet God for a moment and then

be in touch with Him all day."

- Fredrik Wisloff

May we all devote ourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. Colossians 4:2 

I'd love to hear what type of prayer approach works for you!

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