Summer doesn’t hope for growth. It assumes it. Sunshine is all for it. Rain is all for it. Earth is all for it. Seeds are all for it. Summer is ever-confident…of course things will grow. How could they not?
Welcome to a season of focused attention to closing the gap on having a conversational relationship with God. He is the famous one, the powerful one, the wise one and he has invited you into fellowship with him. Grow this summer in seeing this invitation as the great privilege that it is. Pray your way through the days and nights this summer. Grow in understanding who God is and what he has called you to be. God is all for growth, just make sure you are as well. Focus, be intentional, and grow!
Week 22 “Why Pray?” Day 1
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:
If God knows everything, why pray? If God is in control and is going to do whatever he knows is best, why pray? Since I am limited and can’t see the big picture, why pray? What do I know, how can I presume to know what should happen? You should pray because the scriptures say you should. In fact, they say you should pray a lot…you should pray continually (1 Thess. 5:17). We should seek to understand God’s will and ways as much as possible, but we must understand that there is a limit to the capacity of our understanding. This is offensive to adults, but not to children who tend to be aware that they have limits. We are not adults in our relationship to God. We are children. We should try to learn how to better pray and we should also try to pray more often. But in terms of understanding why we should pray even though God is in control, we only need to know that we are told to do so. The fact that God is in control should be an encouragement to pray, not a discouragement from praying. If someone or something else was in control, we should be addressing our prayer and attention to them or it. But since God is in control and he has told us to pray, we are wise to direct our attention and our petitions to him. He can answer prayers because nothing can stand in his way. So ponder the deep things of God all you want, but in the end do the simple things he has told you to do. Pray at all times about all things. This is what he has told us to do and the mysteries of how it all works together is not our concern. Will you wait until you have figured God out before you experience God in your life? If you do, you will wait indefinitely. You don’t have to figure him out to experience him, but you do have to obey him. Pray today. Pray about everything that concerns you and learn to pray about everything that concerns him 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.