Bookends

I’m excited to let you that in just a couple of weeks I’ll start a four-week series here that will add crack-snapple-pop to the topic of prayer in a way that engages all the senses. It’s going to be a lot of fun!

If you know others who would be interested in tagging along, please invite them to stop on by.

Why prayer? Well, here’s one reason.

Youth Retreat

When I was in junior high, a speaker at our youth retreat talked about what he called the “change-the-world hour of prayer”. I made a commitment at that retreat and ever since have been pretty good about starting my day with the Lord in prayer. It’s how I kickoff my day.

But one day I was reading the book of Daniel and came to this verse:

Daniel…went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before.

Three times a day?! I wondered. Why three? And what would that look like?

So I decided to find out. If Daniel could run a whole kingdom and pray three times a day, I could at least try.

An aha! moment

Beginnning the day with Father facetime and touching base with him in prayer before I slipped into bed was fairly easy. The middle of the day was a different story. When 2 pm hit, I was deep into to-do lists, projects, phone calls, and problems. While the front and back of my day were fixed on God the middle was sagging like pizza dough.

And that’s when I realized…

Prayer isn’t a bookend.
Prayer isn’t time we tidily insert at the front or back of our day.
Prayer is an every-moment awareness that God is speaking and he is near—throughout the day.

That can be hard to do when you’re juggling dinner, helping with homework, and reviewing office work you’ve brought home. But it’s the practice of constantly hitting “refresh” in the middle of that chaos that keeps our focus on God up to date.

Praying increases our awareness of God’s presence. So that’s one reason for the upcoming four-week walk through the topic of prayer.

I’m praying that your day would be filled with the awareness that God is near you.