Holy Habits - Make Prayer a Priority (Daily Devotional)

Hello everyone and welcome to Living Supernaturally, the daily devotionals by All Peoples Church, where we take a few minutes to spend time in God's word to build our faith up and live a life that is fruitful in God's kingdom. This week, we've been looking at the theme of holy habits, building godly habits to live a godly life. Today, I just want to emphasize on the point of making prayer a priority, to build the habit of developing a prayer life. 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 verses 16 to 18, Paul writes, "Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." Paul is writing to pray continually, pray always, don't give up on prayer. Think about this, every day on an average we speak thousands of words, we even chat with so many people on our mobile phones. These days we're even talking to AI and so we are spending so much of our words, so much of our time with technology, with AI. But I want to ask us a question, how many of these words every day are we directing towards God? Because prayer is our communication with God. So, prayer isn't just a list of requests, but it's also a relationship. It's talking to Him, listening to Him, bringing your real joys, your real struggles before Him, and slowly aligning your heart before Him. This is what prayer does. If you think about it and you look at the life of Jesus in the gospels, Jesus spent a lot of time in prayer. In Mark chapter 1, verse 35, it says, "Early in the morning, He would go to a solitary place and spend time with the Father." And so, Jesus made it a priority, made it an important part of His life to spend time in prayer. How much more should we, being part of His body, spend time in prayer? Taking the time out to release our words, release our requests, and really talking and communing with the creator of heaven. The good news is prayer doesn't need to be complicated or lengthy; it can be real. It can start small and you can grow. Maybe take a couple of minutes every day just talk to God, pray in Jesus' name and we can all start that way. You don't really need to wait for a formal time or a quiet time. While that is good, but you can pray in every single moment of the day. Even in your mind, you can make a prayer. Maybe before you're meeting your boss or maybe before you're meeting your colleague or before a test, you can make a prayer before God and you can talk and commune with Him. Philippians chapter 4, verses 6 and 7, it says, "Be anxious for nothing, but let your requests be made known to God." So, if you're feeling anxious, if you're feeling worried, our weapon is prayer. The first response can be to pray. Every time you feel confused or you feel worried, you're feeling anxious, prayer is an amazing weapon that we have, that we can release towards heaven. So, I just want to encourage us to start small, to pray a few minutes a day and really enjoy communing with God and grow that, you will come to a place where you will spend a lot of time just talking to God and that is prayer. I pray that each one of us will be encouraged, reminded to build this habit of building a life of prayer. Let's pray, Father, we just thank you for this time, thank you for this reminder, thank you for this amazing privilege, this honor that we can talk to you, we can commune with you through prayer. Lord, we pray, that each one of us will build this habit, not just in the big moments or the big choices, but in the simple everyday moments of life, we will continue to talk to you, continue to release our words towards you. We thank you for this habit, thank you, Lord, that you have encouraged us to release our requests before you. Lord, we just pray especially for people who are confused, who are worried, who are anxious, we just pray, Lord, that as they release their requests before you, that you will bring your peace, you will bring your shalom over us because that is your promise. Thank you once again for this privilege and for this reminder, in Jesus' mighty name we pray, Amen.
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