The challenge for today was to work toward 1 hour in prayer everyday. Prayer has always been a little more difficult for me and if most Christians are honest it is one of their main struggles. We don’t know how to pray, what to pray, and we feel inadequate. I heard a story of someone who wanted to go on the mission field once. A missionary asked the person how much they prayed each day. The person replied around 30 minutes. The missionary then replied if you are going to be on the front lines of God’s work you need to be praying at least 3 hours! That was a crazy story to me but a few months ago I met a gal who has been praying like crazy and God has been opening doors in amazing ways. Many times we think prayer is inefficient but this gal stated that all of these things could not have come about if she would not have been praying. Too many times for myself I would rather read another book or another article than really spend time asking God in prayer what he wants. 3 months ago God put on my heart to stop reading books for awhile. In this time I spent time in prayer and scripture more and the fruit of that has been awesome!
A few other ways I am going to try to be more intentional are over my lunch breaks and throughout the day. Over my lunch breaks I have tried to get away and park in the wal mart parking lot and just pray. It has been a great time to listen to God. The other way I am going to focus on praying is to pray for everyone I come in contact with. I tried this a few months back and was amazed how it changed my day. I found that when I ran into people my first thoughts were usually judgmental but as I switched that to praying for people I had a whole different outlook.
