Monday, February 08, 2016

Savoring Prayer: A Lenten Series


One of my goals for 2016 is to pray more. I feel like recently my practice of prayer has been erratic at best, and over this year I'm hoping to build a consistent prayer habit.


Even as I made this goal to pray more at the beginning of the year, I began to wonder what I would pray. The inspiration for this series came from the Gospels, where various people cried out to Jesus simple sentences that reflected their heart. So over the next few weeks, I hope to focus on each of these short sentences and the heart behind them. These include people facing doubt, those repenting, people desiring to be cleansed. These people, many of whom remain nameless in the various Gospel accounts remind me that many powerful prayers are also simple, and I hope to share my thoughts on these with you.

Also, wouldn't you know that my church is doing a series on prayer over the Lenten season? What great timing! Several posts over the next few weeks will be inspired by my church's prayer series, as well as by my own experiences.

This prayer goal is part of my #oneword365 for this year, savor, which inspired the name of this series, Savoring Prayer. Prayer invites us to savor God's presence in our time alone, and reminds us to take some time away from this busy life, to focus (and re-focus). Spiritually, prayer is that deep breath that we take before we give a big speech, or climb that next flight of stairs, or walk into that new situation. Our prayer time prepares us for every action and activity that comes next, and yet allows us to pause and reflect on what has come before.

I hope that you too, are encouraged to pray more over these next few weeks. And I'll end this short post with a prayer from Paul in his letter to the Ephesians:

I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power.
Ephesians 1:17-19

Be blessed and shine in prayer!

No comments:

Post a Comment

A person finds joy in giving an apt reply—
and how good is a timely word! -Prov 15:23