Week 23 “Pray Constantly” 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:
Rom. 12:12 Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.
Reflect:
Practice makes permanent. What you do repeatedly over time shapes who you are. What we repeat (intentionally or unintentionally) becomes reflexive for us. What you do reflexively is who you have become. If anger has been practiced, then anger now comes quickly and easily for you. You have become an angry person. If kindness has been practiced, then kindness comes “naturally” for you and you have become a kind person. You think it’s not that simple? Yes, in fact, it is that simple. But it’s not by any means easy to change your reflexes. This is especially true once you have practiced “wrong” for a long time. Now you have to both undo bad reflexes and train good ones. To be faithful in prayer simply means to practice prayer. It means to do it, over and over again. At first, you will need to remind yourself to pray as you go through your day. In response to these reminders to pray and also through the practice of praying, you are being faithful in prayer. How does your praying life compare to someone else’s? That is not your concern other than maybe how you can be challenged by their example. But in terms of “measuring” how much you pray or how well you pray as compared to someone else, this is not to be your focus. Focus on faithfulness. Faithfulness is practice. Faithfulness is a lifetime of closing the gap between where you are and where you could be. What will you do today to remind yourself to pray? What will you do today in practice that will make prayer a bit more reflexive for you?
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.