Re-learning prayer
I am so glad to be with you for the next 7 days.
Sometimes we find the miraculous in the “new”. There is a new healing, a discovery, a new path, or a new beginning. Other times, we find the miraculous on a familiar path, or somewhere we have been before, but God opens our eyes to a new revelation. For the next seven days, I want to invite you onto a familiar path, knowing that God has a new miracle waiting for us in the familiar.
I want to start with a bold proclamation...if you have a perfect prayer life, you are excused for the next seven days: If you are someone whose prayer life is easy, your mind stays focused all of the time and never wanders, you can pray for an hour and wonder where the time has gone, if you have never had an issue with why a prayer went unanswered, or if your communication with God is perfected, then you do not need to be here. But, the truth is, no one's prayer life is this perfect.
This seven-day journey is for those of us who have acknowledged that our prayer life is not perfect. friend, if your mind wanders or has struggled with talking and listening to God, if your idea of prayer is an endless list of needs, if you have ever wondered why God did not answer your prayer request, if you have ever wondered if you are praying right, or if you have ever questioned if prayer even works. If this is what you have experienced in your prayer life, then this series is for you, and I am right there with you.
We have a lot of misunderstandings when it comes to talking and listening to God. If you look at some of the ways we pray or how we learned to pray, it can be confusing.
friend, have you ever thought about some of the bedtime prayers we teach children?
“Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, If I should die before I wake, I pray that Lord my soul to take…”. No wonder the kid is terrified to close his eyes! Yet we still wonder why they struggle at bedtime. Parents, it is time to find another alternative prayer that doesn’t frighten the children!
Have you ever thought about saying “Grace” before a meal? We sit down in front of a plate filled with lard, butter, cream, fat, oil, and more butter, and then we ask God to bless the food for the nourishment of our bodies. We may as well pray, “Lord, bless the willful hardening of my arteries because that is what we are doing”. But we pray because that is what we do.
What about the most famously spoken prayer that we pray and almost immediately forget, “God, if you get me out of the mess that I created all my myself, I promise that I will never, ever do it again.”
friend, if you have ever wanted to connect deeply with God, I want to invite you back to the basics. For the next seven days, we are going to pray the miraculous prayer of Jesus. It is found in Matthew 6:9-13, let’s pray it together:
“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, But deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.” (Matthew 6:9-13, NKJV)
You are a miracle!
