Do you ever feel troubled, unsatisfied, or even guilty about the way you pray?
If so, you are not alone. A 2019 Crossway Publishing survey found that 98% of Christians are not fully satisfied with their prayer life. The question is: How do we grow in this area? Law crushes. Dissatisfaction frustrates. Guilt demoralizes. Resolve will fade away. But, what if there’s another way?
Martin Luther famously stated, “I rarely pray for more than ten minutes, but I rarely go ten minutes without praying.” More importantly, Jesus said, “When you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them!” (Matthew 6:7).
In context, Jesus is condemning insincere, wordy phrases used in prayer, and placing great value on prayers that are brief, sincere, rightly-focused, and regular.
God alone is the Author of true spiritual growth and the One who draws us into communion with Himself through prayer. The Holy Spirit graciously instills in us this longing for fellowship but we often feel dissatisfied by our prayer life, not knowing where to start or how to carve out what we think is “enough” time for prayer. While the prayers of believers vary in length and form depending on the situation, what remains unchanged is God’s zeal for hearts that are rightly focused on Him. Our goal is to humbly join you in your desire for a more robust prayer life by focusing on one of the forms prayer can take - brief, regular, refined prayers offered throughout the day.
We are a team of three actively engaged, working board members and two writers, Chris Kawa and Laura Abbott. Chris is the Senior Pastor of an EFCA church just south of Knoxville, Tennessee. Laura is a teacher at a Classical Christian School in Louisville, Kentucky.
Dear Christian,
About prayer, professor Peter Kreeft wrote, “I strongly suspect that if we saw all the difference even the tiniest of our prayers to God make, and all the people those little prayers were destined to affect, and all the consequences of those effects down through the centuries, we would be so paralyzed with awe at the power of prayer that we would be unable to get up off our knees for the rest of our lives.”
So many people feel inadequate or guilty for offering brief prayers to God, but Kreeft is right. God uses even the tiniest prayers we offer to accomplish great things. In Matthew 6, Jesus not only sanctions brief prayers, He tells us exactly what we should focus on in our prayers.
Once we realize that Jesus encourages and blesses our succinct, focused prayers, then we no longer need to feel that they are insufficient. In fact, we are then free to focus on praying brief prayers as a way to fulfill the Biblical exhortation to pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17). If these brief prayers represent the beginning of real change, they can help us quickly gain real traction in our prayer lives. This traction often leads to real transformation.
What an encouragement to hone in on real needs in real time, regularly praying for the people, challenges, and opportunities in our lives. Our hope is that through the 20-20 Prayer Challenge, you will be able to look back on each day and rejoice over the time you spent before the throne of grace.
May we together respond to the promptings of the Holy Spirit and find ourselves not heaping up empty words or losing heart, but continuing unceasingly and steadfastly in prayer (Matthew 6:7, Luke 18:1, I Thessalonians 5:17, Colossians 4:2).
By His grace,
The Prayer Incorporated Team
Are you ready to take a life-changing challenge that will bless you and others?
Stopping to pray for 20 seconds forces you to clarify and anchor your thoughts on real-time needs for people, challenges and opportunities. This simple gameplan ought to instill the impulse and habit of drawing you closer to God and to others.
You accepted the challenge, and here’s your daily support of Biblical insight, coaching focus, and brief prayer to start the day.
Based on the Lord's Prayer, this devotional series accompanies the 20-20 Prayer Challenge and is designed to help you incrementally develop the impulse to pray more regularly, intentionally, and with a heighten focus on eternity.
Any respectable challenge ought to include a coach, right?
This plan provides for 7 days of additional insights for you to adopt that encourage you along the Challenge’s journey. God is there every single moment of every day waiting for you to approach Him. All it takes is the right kind of coaching to take another step closer to Him.
Haven’t we heard a variety of prayers in our lifetimes? So what then is so powerful about lifting up brief prayers throughout the day?
God desires frequent and meaningful contact with us, and this series provides 7 explanations
that deepen our understanding of prayer and the extraordinary value and examples of brief
prayers.
As the popular entertainer Matthew West sings, DON’T STOP PRAYING after the 20-20 Prayer Challenge.
This devotional series that is based on one of the most beautiful Psalms will fortify your continual praying habit and keep you growing closer to God with the richness that it reveals about our loving Shepherd.
Thank you for being a part of the journey with Prayer Incorporated. If you enjoyed the 20-20
Challenge and appreciated the material, share this bulletin with your friends and ask them to
visit PrayerIncorp.com.
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