Week 22 “Why Pray?” Day 3
Pray:
Ask God to reorient you to Himself. Confess any known sin. Thank Him for His forgiveness. Be still and reflect on Jesus and His sacrifice for you. Ask the Holy Spirit to open your heart and mind to God’s Word. Pray for others in your life that they, too, would know and love God today.
Read:
Mark 1:35 Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.
Deut. 29:29 The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.
Reflect:
A “secret thing” is how human prayer and God’s sovereignty work together. A “revealed thing” is that they do work together. You can wait until you have it all worked out in your mind before you enter deeply and consistently into a conversational relationship with God. However, if you do, you will wait indefinitely. God is sovereign; all things are under his control and, at the same time, you are still told by God to pray. The sovereign God has set things up in such a way that your act of praying matters in terms of outcomes. Don’t spend much time trying to figure it out. It’s not a math problem; it’s a relational reality. You really only need to be convinced of the fact that God has told you to pray and that your prayer matters. If you are convinced of this one thing, then whether or not you figure out any number of other things will not make a significant difference. The best place to look for how to live the Christian life well is to look to Christ himself. He prayed and you should too. He asked God for what he wanted and he trusted God for what he gave. You can try to “get off the hook” by telling yourself that, since he was the Christ, it’s really not helpful to look to his life as a model for yours. However, scripture points us directly to his life as a model for how to live ours. Of course he was not just a role model, he was the atonement for our sins. But though he was more than a role model, he was certainly not less than one. Look to him, do what he did, and try to live like he lived. Jesus prayed. You should as well.
Pray:
(Personalize this prayer today; make it specific to the circumstances that face you.)
Ask God to lead you through His Spirit as you go through your day. Ask Him to bring to mind the truth of the gospel and its implications for what you will encounter today. Tell Him “Yes” to His will and ask Him for His power and protection to live this “yes.” Ask God to create and reveal opportunities to proclaim the good news today.