Go ahead. Admit it. You thought this was going to be a boring book on a subject you were only partially interested in. You thought you’d read a few pages and that would be that. But if you’ve made it this far, I’m guessing that maybe—just maybe—something on these pages struck a chord with you. Maybe you started seeing Jesus sitting in your den, coffee in hand, waiting patiently to spend time with you. Maybe you found out prayer wasn’t so much about style as it was opening your heart and communicating with God. Maybe for the first time, you discovered a genuine hunger for something more in your relationship with God. Like making more time for Him in your oh-so-busy life. Or better yet, maybe you finally made the decision to move out of the pilot’s seat and let Him take over the controls of your life. Maybe you’ve begun to wonder what your life would look like if that really happened.
Remember when you were back in school and as class began your teacher would say those two dreaded words: pop quiz? Well, boys and girls, put away your notes, get out a clean sheet of paper, and let’s see how you’re doing. Second thought, don’t think of it as a test so much as a spiritual barometer to see what kind of progress you’ve made.
Caution: Be brave. I’m aiming right for the jugular with this one.
If someone told you to spend the next twenty-four hours in prayer, what’s your first response? Be honest now.
1. I can’t. My schedule is booked solid from now until forever. No way.
2. Noooooooo! Puhleeeeeez don’t make me! I’d lose my mind having to sit still for that long! Besides, I’m hypoglycemic. No can do.
3. I think I’m having a heart attack. I need to get to the hospital. (Actually, what you’re feeling is nothing more than an intense inner-shuddering; but a heart attack sounds more serious, right?)
4. Wow! That sounds amazing! I’ve always wanted to do something like that! Let me grab my Bible, and I’m good to go!
Think about answer #4. I imagine it something akin to a military wife whose soldier husband is headed home after eighteen months in the Middle East. The prospect of spending time with him for twenty-four uninterrupted hours thrills her heart. She’s excited and eager and filled with anticipation!
Okay, now put that back into the context of spending twenty-four hours alone with your Father, your Lord, your Savior. Are you excited and eager? Are you filled with anticipation of all that’s in store for you? Would you be surprised to learn that some people actually do that? Do you know some people have even spent forty days and forty nights in prayer and fasting? And not just preachers or pastors, regular people like you and me.
So I ask you once again. Is there even a trace of desire or yearning to block off twenty-four hours to spend with God? Good question. And whatever answer is milling about in your heart and head should give you some indication of where you are spiritually. That’s a lot to think about, isn’t it?
Another confession. One for the road, if you will. I love Sunday afternoons. It’s the one time all week I can veg without guilt and nap while blissfully claiming my official “day of rest.” That’s biblical, right? And once we get home from church and have lunch, I love to curl up on the sofa and watch hours of football, golf, baseball, or some old movies in the off-seasons. I look at that block of time—whether it’s three or four hours for a Titans’ game or five to six hours of the final round of PGA golf—as my very own kick-back-and-relax time. After a long week, I deserve it, right? And if I drift off for a snooze, even better. (Have I mentioned I love my Sunday afternoons?)
Now. Let me make that pop quiz more personal. If I sensed God nudging me to give up my leisurely Sunday afternoons and spend them in prayer with Him, would I? If He asked me to give those long glorious hours of R&R over to Him for prayer, would I willingly submit to His request? Is there any way I’d actually be happy to do that?
No. I’m cringing here because I hate to admit it to you after all we’ve been through on these pages, but no. In my heart of hearts, I know I’d do it but with a serious grudge. If I did it at all.
Oh, I might not hesitate to block off a twenty-four-hour chunk of time to pray—if the price tag said “one time only.” But once a year? Once a month? I dunno. Maybe . . .
They say confession is good for the soul, but the reality is, it sickens me to admit this is where I am. After all I’ve learned and all He’s taught me . . . apparently I’m still greedy about my precious time. Apparently my spiritual barometer still needs a lot of work.
Still, if you and I are at least willing to start examining our hearts about these matters, we’re surely making progress. The challenge is to move beyond retrospection and do something about it. Amen?
There’s so much more to learn about prayer. We’ve barely scratched the surface here, folks. That was intentional on my part because I made a conscious effort to focus on two specific things: (1) learning what prayer is and isn’t, and (2) learning how to establish a routine, daily prayer time.
Bottom line, I can tell you this (now that you bought my book and read it)—none of it matters. Not the methods, not the verses, not the list of reasons for praying, not the clever and quirky chats we’ve had—none of it. That’s because the only thing that matters is this: that you pray. Every. Single. Day. Focused and fully concentrating on your relationship with God through prayerful communication.
I have to be honest. A funny thing happens whenever you try to tackle a subject like this, to inform or inspire “others.” In the end you quickly discover the vastness of your subject, and you’re immediately humbled by how much you don’t know about it. That s certainly been the case for me as I’ve shared some of my own experiences with you. But I’ll make a few final confessions, like this one—and I’m utterly embarrassed to tell you. While burning up my keyboard, pontificating about my own prayer journey, I’ve found myself struggling to follow my own advice. Days slipped by before I realized I’d actually skipped my morning prayer times. I’d raced right past my Jesus as He sat in that study, his coffee grown cold.
Am I a hypocrite or what?
And once again, I’m saddened to discover I’m still not the prayer warrior I want to be. Not even close.
Then there are the days I’ve kept my morning coffee time with Jesus; but if I’m honest, I’ve done nothing more than go through the motions. I’ve read some scripture, raced through my prayer journal, and patted myself on the back for being so disciplined. But nothing penetrated my mind, much less my heart. It’s that pesky auto-pilot habit we talked about.
But today’s stupid blooper takes the cake, the cupcake, the coffee cake, and every other kind of cake in the bakery. At least for me. Oh, I kept my divine appointment this time. But just as I finished reading a scripture passage and started working my way through my prayer journal, I happened to glance over at my cell phone on the end table beside me . . .
I’m really tired of my ringtone. I still love the theme from Braveheart, but it’s getting old. I should download a new one. Hmm. What would be a good song? How about “Brand New Day” by Sting? Or maybe a Big Band tune? Wait, maybe some Billy Joel or that new song by Keith Urban . . .
At that point, I dropped my head in resignation. Oh no. Not again.
Don’t roll your eyes. I know it may sound silly to you to stress over something so trivial. But at this point in my prayer journey, I should be way, way past this kind of thing by now. Will I never learn? Here I am—an aspiring author working on a book about prayer—so easily and outright distracted, so easily lured away from my oh-so meaningful prayer life by nothing more than a simple glance at my cell phone. Good grief! I’m no different than that bored little freckle-faced mini-me at Camp Nunny Cha-Ha so many years ago— unable to keep focus and pray. Unable to do any of those things I’ve been writing about for months. Will I ever conquer these distractions? Why can’t I just do as I say? Why can’t I stay focused for even a lousy twenty minutes? Have I made no headway at all after all these years?
Oh no. Here it comes again. Prayer guilt.
If so
meone gave out awards for this particular accomplishment, I’d surely be basking in the glory of red carpet praise. I’d make my way to the stage when my name was announced as the All-Time Queen of Prayer Guilt. Got the tiara, got the trophy, got the guilt.
Call me a drama queen, but you get the point. Then, while I’m busily slapping a Prayer Slacker sticker on my worn and tattered guilt-trip suitcase, I start thinking about David. You know, the one from the Old Testament. The shepherd who became a king. But David was hardly a saint. Among his many virtues, he was also a peeping Tom, an adulterer, a murderer, a schemer, and a sorry excuse for a father. Yet God referred to David as “a man after [my] own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14). Doesn’t make sense, does it? I mean, those were big sins David committed.
Isn’t it odd how we label those “big sins” to cover things like murder, adultery, child abuse, kidnapping, terrorism, arson, Ponzy scheming, and the like? It’s as if we play a game called “My Sin vs. Your Sin.” My little white lie to my friend is way better than you stealing a fiver out of someone’s purse. My “creative” bookkeeping is nowhere near as bad as you cheating on your husband. And on and on it goes. We start to feel rather smug about our little sins in light of someone else’s mega-sins. It’s actually kind of sick to think of it in those terms—having pride about the fact that I’m not as bad a sinner as you. Oh, the twists and turns of human logic.
But it completely messes with our minds to think that God views all sins equally. A sin is a sin is a sin in His eyes. And the fact remains, we all sin. But we’re children of a loving Father who yearns to forgive us if only we’ll come clean and confess those sins, big or small. In other words, He loves me even when I forget to pray. He loves me even when I just go through the motions. And He loves me even when I screw up royally like David did.
Having kids is a sure-fire way to learn about the full depth of forgiveness. We may hate some of the choices they make. We may grieve over the idiotic, repetitive mistakes they make and the resulting consequences they must face. But we still love them. No matter what, we still love them. Now take that unconditional love you feel for your kids and multiply it by a couple trillion. That still doesn’t come close to the love God has for us. Even when we screw up.
So, hey, maybe one of the reasons I’ve continued to blow it in my own prayer life is so that you can learn from my pathetic mistakes. Yeah. I’m sure that’s it.
But wait—there’s more! (Channeling the late Billy Mays here.) There’s another potential danger lurking around us if we actually follow through and keep our daily appointment with God. It creeps up when we least expect it. We’re cruising along, day after day, faithfully making time for God in our routine, feeling all warm and fuzzy about ourselves . . . then BAM! That’s when it happens.
Your god may be your little Christian habit—the habit of prayer or Bible reading at certain times of your day. Watch how your Father will upset your schedule if you begin to worship your habit instead of what the habit symbolizes. We say, “I can’t do that right now; this is my time alone with God.” No, this is your time alone with your habit.1
Ouch?! That’s another one from Oswald Chambers. Ol’ Ozzie doesn’t mince words, does he? I don’t know about you, but that one felt like I just had my knuckles whacked by a nun with a ruler. Which is particularly strange since I never went to Catholic school.
But Oswald is right. It’s so very easy to fall into this trap of worshiping our habit of praying. It’s that stupid pride monster rearing its ugly head yet again. My pastor once said “I stink at prayer because I’m so good at pride.”2 Pete, I think most of us are in same boat with you on that one. In fact, that boat’s starting to sink because so many of us are crowded on it with you!
Professor and author Dr. Calvin Miller writes this word of caution: “Remember anything more important than God to you, is god to you.3
Whoa. Think about that one for a moment. It holds all kinds of implications, doesn’t it? See, the minute you and I begin to think we’ve learned all there is to know about this or that, and fancy ourselves as some self-proclaimed authority on the subject, we’re doomed. Especially in matters of faith. There is only one Authority, and His name is Jehovah. Our God. Our Lord Jesus Christ. Our Heavenly Father. The rest of us will never fully get it until we meet Him face to face. And, oh, what a moment that will be!
In the meantime, we do our best to live our lives to honor Him. And there’s no better way to do that than spending time with Him. Every single day. Not as some kind of robotrons, programmed to meet a set schedule. But as children of God, who hunger to spend time with Him, opening our hearts to Him.
By now you know I’m not perfect. But neither are you, my friend. In fact, I’ll bet the reason this book interested you was because the title touched a nerve. Am I right? If so, you’re probably a confessed (or as yet un-confessed) slacker just like me. We’ve both failed time and time again. And guess what? We’ll continue to fail time and time again. So what can we do about that? You need to learn as I have learned that each day is a new day, a new beginning with a clean slate. Repeat that out loud with me.
Each day is a new day,
a new beginning with a clean slate.
If your memory struggles like mine, you might want to write that across the inside of your prayer journal or print it and tape it to the edge of your computer screen. Anyplace where you’ll see it daily. We need to remind ourselves of that fact every morning as we wake. If we fall into slackerdom for a day or two or three, we just need to try harder today. Then tomorrow. And every tomorrow to follow.
If you’ll allow me one final personal note, I want to bring my journey full circle for you. To do so, I need to share a verse with you that always gives me a thrill when I read it. Let me set the scene for you. Early in Jesus’ ministry, He began calling His first disciples. One day, He was standing by a lake when a large crowd started pressing in all around Him. They’d heard of His miracles and were anxious to hear more. He saw two boats anchored nearby, but the fishermen were away from them, washing out their nets onshore. So Jesus climbed into one of the boats and told the fisherman named Simon (we know him later as Peter), to put out a little from the shore. Simon obliged, then Jesus sat down and began to teach the people from the boat.
When He finished, He told Simon, “Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch” (Luke 5:4). Simon answers, “Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything.” Now, knowing what we know from later accounts about Simon/Peter (aka Mr. Knee Jerk), can’t you just imagine the body language that accompanied his response? Remember, at this point he has no idea who this man is who’s telling him what to do. He’s exhausted and frustrated after fishing all night and not catching a thing. No doubt he rolls his eyes and throws his shoulders back, posturing at the audacity of such a suggestion, maybe snapping his neck to one side then the other with irritation. Who does this guy think he is, telling me how to fish?!
Still, in the last half of that verse, we’re told Simon added, “But because you say so, I will let down the nets.” What? Why would a tough guy like Simon cave so quickly to a complete stranger? We’re not told, but somehow I like to think it was something he saw in Jesus’ eyes. Someone once said the eyes are windows to the soul. And don’t you know Jesus had the most captivating, beautiful eyes ever given to a human? Don’t you know the immense depth of His love shone through those amazing eyes to everyone He met? Which could possibly explain why Simon so quickly acquiesced and did as he was told. Look what happened:
When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled both boats so full that they began to sink.
—Luke 5:6-7
For me, the nugget of truth that speaks to my heart in this passage is this: if only I’ll go deeper in my trust and faith in Him, the more wonders I’ll behold in my life—things so far beyond my imagination, I can
barely comprehend.
And that has been exactly what has happened. The book you now hold in your hands is evidence of that. I had struggled for years trying to get published. I kept writing novels and wondering why on earth no one was interested in publishing them. One of them, which I wrote in installments on a website, registered more than 67,000 readers and flooded my inbox with more than 1,000 positive e-mails! Still, nothing. An entire decade flew by as I banged my head against my desk, frustrated that my dream wasn’t happening.
That was until God finally got my attention. I shared that story with you in the first chapters of this book. Slowly, as I began making time to spend with Him each morning, I realized how much I’d been missing. He had so much to say to me! Why had I never stopped and listened before? Weeks turned into months, months into years, until the time I spent with Him each morning became a daily habit, one that I looked forward to and rarely missed. And in the process, I began to sense God was nudging me about this whole prayer journey I’d been on. I started making notes during my prayer times, writing down verses that God seemed to be showing me and excerpts from books I was reading along the way. At the same time, I was meeting new Christians who had no idea how to have a prayer life with God.
And that’s when I knew: God was calling me to write for Him. He wanted me to share my story. He wanted me to use the gifts He’d given me—this undying passion for writing, and maybe even the quirky way I visualize situations in my mind—to help others discover the joy and blessings that await them if only they’d make time for Him too. So I started writing. And the words and ideas and examples and scripture verses literally flooded my mind, almost to the point I could barely keep up on my keyboard.
I’m here to tell you I felt like I was the living embodiment of that verse in Luke 5:4. God had told me to go deep when He drew me to Himself, teaching me how to have a prayer life with Him, and now He was overwhelming me with blessings in ways I could never have imagined.
So I have to ask. What will it take for you to go deep with God? All those silly excuses aside, what’s stopping you?
I know you’ll be shocked that I’m finally going to wrap this up and leave the rest to you. I thank you for taking time to read about my prayer journey. I’m flattered—dare I say, shocked— that you picked my book off the shelf when there are so many other authors far more qualified from which to choose.
No wait. I take that back. There may be hundreds of authors more qualified on the subject of prayer, but concerning prayer slackerdom? No way. I’m it. Self-proclaimed with mountains of guilt to show for it. Although, thankfully, I have a Father who graciously forgives me for all my stupid blunders along the way, wiping my slate clean whenever I come to Him in humble apology. He offers you the exact same forgiveness. It’s there for the taking.
I hope in some small way, you’ve been challenged enough to start on a prayer journey of your own. I pray that you’ll accept the challenge and find out for yourself what a difference daily personal prayer can make in your life. I guarantee you’ll never be the same. You have my word on that.
Call to Me, and I will answer you,
and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know.
—Jeremiah 33:3, NKJV
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For a Preview of Diane’s other books see below after author page.
Introduction
1. Have you ever had a Come-to-Jesus moment in your life? If so, what was the unique path that led you to Him? If not, have you ever experienced that tug in your heart and wondered what it was?
2. When was the last time you had a consistent prayer life? How long did it last? Why do you think you succeeded?
3. If it’s no longer a part of your life, why is that?
Chapter 1—My Personal Prayer Journey
1. What is your earliest memory concerning prayer?
2. When did you first learn about having a personal prayer life?
Chapter 2—My Journey Continues
1. Have you ever shaken your fist at God?
2. In Fresh Brewed Life, Nicole Johnson talks about spectator living. Are you living as a spectator? What dreams are you ignoring so you won’t face disappointment?
Chapter 3—Excuses, Excuses, Excuses
1. Which of the Top 10 Excuses hit closest to home for you?
2. Have you ever fully comprehended that God made you because He wants to have a relationship with you? Does that change how you regard His intimate love for you?
Chapter 4—More Excuses?
1. Did a seemingly unanswered prayer ever affect your love for God?
2. Have you ever shunned God because your M&Ms didn’t drop down in the vending machine after you deposited your coins (translation: prayed)?
3. Be honest. Are you lazy when it comes to God?
Chapter 5—Our #1 Excuse for Not Praying
1. Are you too busy for God?
2. What does discipline look like in your relationship with God?
3. So, on average, how many hours a day do you watch TV? Hmm? (Don’t forget to include those morning news programs.)
Chapter 6—Just How Badly Do You Want It?
1. Well, then, just how badly do you want it?
2. Like Briana in the skit, do you routinely exclude God from your life and your activities? How so?
3. Are you sincerely willing for God to do heart surgery on you? If not, what’s stopping you?
Chapter 7—Getting Started
1. Try to visualize Jesus waiting for you to spend time with Him each day. Where is He? In your home? Outdoors? In your office? Does that visualization help remind you to pray?
2. When is the best time of day for you to meet with God?
Chapter 8—Gotta-Haves
1. When was the last time you read a Bible?
2. Do you have a readable translation?
3. How would you set up your prayer journal to make the most of your prayer time?
Chapter 9—Getting to Know Your God
1. Did you learn anything new about God by studying some of the names of God?
2. If you had to pick one of the names we discussed, which one has the most significance to you at this point in your life? Why?
3. Can you think of a specific situation in which you saw God’s provision, exemplifying His name of Jehoval-Jireh—The Lord Will Provide?