November is for Prayer

Nov 1 - For this month, I'm going to be working on Prayer. I have been convicted lately that I am not praying as I should. I do pray most every day, but it tends to be while I'm in the middle of something and a stray thought crosses my mind and I just kind of toss off a prayer without giving it any thought. Now, I firmly believe that the Lord hears that prayer, but I also know that that isn't the only point to prayer.

Prayer allows me to have time with God.

Prayer gives me time to really think about my sins and to repent on them (which helps me to focus on where and how I need to change so that I become a better Christian).

Prayer is when I can really, truly focus on the needs of my family and friends and church and I can go to God for and with them.

Prayer helps me focus my heart and mind and tongue onto glorifying God and serving others.

So, the point of this goal is to spend purposeful and conscious time in prayer each day. To really examine my heart and not flinch away from it's filthiness. To repent and ask God for His mercy and blessings.

I'm not going to set a specific time for this. Maybe I'll find out that I need one, but for now, I'm just going to make it a point to pray each day.




Nov 10 - Don't you just love it when God prepares a sermon just for you? We went to a church meeting today and Elder Lassere Bradley, Jr preached a sermon about why we pray. Here are the reasons he listed (he had verses to go with them, but I was wrestling a one-year old and didn't get to write everything down).

We pray:

• Because God commands it
• To strengthen our faith
• It expresses our dependence upon Him
• Because Jesus prayed
• Because it pleases God for us to ask

Also, he said that God's purposes and promised don't replace prayer; they encourage it.

I was so blessed by this sermon. It's really helped me in this goal.




Nov 22 - Yesterday was 21 days. I have to say that I'm doing ok with this goal. I still have a hard time focusing my thoughts and settling myself down enough to really pray, but I am so much more conscious about at least remembering that I should be praying. That's a big step, I think. Don't they say that acknowledging you have a problem is half the battle? Maybe in this case, it's being aware that I need to pray is half the battle. Anyway. I definitely need to keep working on this, but I do feel that I'm doing better. Not great, but better.  Happy Thanksgiving, y'all!




Nov 30 - As November draws to an end, I am reflecting upon my endeavor to have a stronger prayer life. It did not go as well as I wanted. My flesh would find any reason to delay prayer time. Many times, I had to force myself to pray simply because I knew it was what I should be doing. Once I was there, I found I wanted to be there, but it was definitely very easy to neglect. Daily conscious prayer is not yet an ingrained habit, but it is more often at the front of my mind than it used to be, so I feel like I'm making progress. I'm going to keep working on this in December and maybe by the time I'm old, I'll have it figured out.