Faithbase

Prayer, Day 6. Start with prayer. Dear God, please help me to hear you and understand your message for me. Amen. The beans, or the background. Last week, we looked at how Jesus set an example of how to pray for his disciples when he taught them the Lord's Prayer. Praise, purpose, petition, pardon, and protection are the five components of his prayer that we'll be looking at this week, starting today, with praise. The verse, Psalm 107, verses 8 and 9. Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for mankind, for he satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things. The fill. What's the point? I don't have the exact facts to prove it, but just know that someone, somewhere, proved that when we choose to focus on the good, our mood changes to a positive one. And as such, more good things begin to flow into our days. Now, this isn't why Jesus tells us to begin our prayers with praise, but I've come to discover from personal experience that beginning my prayers with praise to God for his blessings in my life, it recenters my mind a bit. When we pray, more often than not, we're coming to God with complaints, needs, hurt, or bad things. But when I take the time to say, thank you for waking me up today, for my health, for my home, for my family, you know, all the amazing blessings that we tend to just take for granted every day, well, it kind of reminds me that the problems I'm praying over still need to be addressed, but they carry less weight. I feel peace over the problems as I remember that I still have plenty to praise him for. And praising him for the big things reminds me of his faithfulness. I mean, he loves me when I don't deserve it. He loves me enough to bless me with air in my lungs, with food to eat, with family and friends to share life with. If he can work those miracles and blessings into my life, I can certainly trust him with any other thing as well. This team, what does this mean to me? How can I apply it to my life today? This week, I am challenging you. This week, I want you to try to devote just a few minutes to prayer each day. You're going to physically get away from distraction. That means put the phone down, cut the radio or the TV off. Go somewhere where you aren't distracted. Ladies, I get it. I've got a six-year-old and a 14-month-old at home, so I've literally had to hide in the bathroom before. You do what you gotta do. But commit each day this week to getting away to focus on simply praying. Each day, we'll be adding a new component so that they will build upon one another. So here we go. Starting with praise, I want you to list it out. List out your blessings. What has God given you today that you need to thank him for? Food? Water? Shelter? Family? Friends? A job? Take the time to thank him for all that you've been blessed with, and then be quiet. Allow this time of focusing on your blessings to remind you of just how much he loves you, of just how cherished and precious you are to him. Allow yourself to remember that every moment of every day, he is walking with you, and if you can trust him to wake you up each morning to fill your lungs with air, you can trust that he'll guide you through whatever it is you're facing today as well.