Many times I start making a plan to do great things for God and end up using prayer as a last resort. This is a good challenge to start with prayer. I love it that the first day focuses on not only prayer, but prayer with someone else. Too many times we as men(but also everyone in general) try to go about things by ourselves. We need others to spur us on toward love and good deeds. Many people around me, myself included, often say we don’t have time for prayer. You see I thought the same thing 8 years back and that lead to a question my wife and I asked “How do we hear God’s voice better?” That leads us to getting rid of TV and diving in the word and prayer like never before. You know what happened? God lead us on a crazy adventure. God wanted to speak to us, and we needed to create the space to hear Him. Prayer should not just be a good thing we do, it should be, along with scripture, the fuel for our fire.
In figuring out who my prayer partner would be I had a hard time deciding, a little indecisive I am, but I got an email from someone in my discipleship group. It said
“I started the 30 day challenge and I am recruiting a prayer partner (1st day assignment). I’ll be yours if you’ll be mine.”
I was excited because I know that this person WILL pray for me daily! So pick someone you know WILL pray for you daily. Pick someone who WILL pray bold prayers for you and will uplift you daily! But don’t stop there. Be the person who WILL be that same type of person. I am going to email, text, and call this person a few times a week to pray and want to try get together as well to pray together.
So as I start this 30 day challenge I found myself a prayer partner but I am also realizing I have to say no to some things. Months back I used a time tracking app called Toggl. I tracked every 15 minutes of my week and at the end of the week I looked at my time report. Wow! It really showed my priorities and I realized I had the time, I just needed to be more disciplined. So as you start this look at how you spend your time. Figure out the one thing or habit that is keeping you from experiencing God better and try to not do it, or limit it for these 30 days. My time sucker can be Facebook and ESPN so I am going to limit them to a 30 minute window at night. Here we go.
Awesome idea, Justin — limiting (but maybe not ELIMINATING) a “time sucker.” That gives you some moderation that might last for the long haul. And how great was it that one of the other guys said, “I’ll be yours if you’ll be mine!” That’s great!