Devoted: Prayer

In the word of Richard Foster from his influential book Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth, “to pray is to change.” This early community of disciples was not just a radically kind and generous community. It wasn’t just a community that stunned the culture with its compassion and inclusion. It wasn’t just the latest place to be or fulfillment of a need for social activity. It was a life-transformative community. The lives of people were not stagnate and were nearly unrecognizable from what they were. Because to be devoted to prayer is to be devoted to change. It is this truth that seems to be the underlying difficulty of prayer. To truly pray is to invite transformation. This means that prayer is not a vending machine to go to when we need something or when our lives get too difficult for us to handle on our own. Prayer is a primary formative practice where God meets us and reveals to us the change that he desires to do in our lives.

“If we are unwilling to change, we will abandon prayer as a noticeable characteristic of our lives. The closer we get to the heartbeat of God the more we see our need and the more we desire to be conformed to Jesus.” The disciples in Acts knew this, to pray is to change — that is why they devoted themselves to it. What they learned of Jesus, what they experienced among the fellowship and the unity in the simplicity of the breaking of bread… if this is what it means to be a disciple of Jesus, if this is what the gathered ones of Jesus, the church, was going to be like then of course I am going to devote myself to prayer because I want that change — I want that transformation. Is there any part of you that is appealed by that? Open yourself up, listen, and seek Jesus. You will find your life transformed.

1. On a scale of 1-10 how would you rate your prayer life? Why do you rank it there? What do you feel is lacking?
2. What barriers to do you think you have between you and a healthy prayer life? What do you think you can do to remove them?
3. How adverse are you to change in your life right now? Are there things in your life that you are afraid God will ask you to change? If so, why are you afraid of that?
4. What are two practical ways that you can begin being more devoted to prayer?

What’s Next?

• Join in at Sunday Prayer at 9:30a as we pray together and model what it can look like to allow scripture to help us to prayer and then pray for what God has put on our hearts.
• If you have not done Pray21 yet, pick a copy from the welcome desk or find the resource on our website.
• Make a list of reasons that you cannot spend time in prayer. Then come up with 1-2 solutions to those reasons.