Practical Prayer

Intro

Alright guys, so tonight is our final devotion of the summer. As a reminder, I call these shorter talks “devotionals” rather than messages…because typically we are not diving into one passage to draw every truth out of it we can…but rather we are lightly covering a topic based in scripture. We are giving a 10,000 foot view of it, in hopes of inspiring and equipping you to grow.

And this summer, it’s been our desire to help you grow, in the spiritual disciplines.

We haven’t been able to discuss all of them, but here’s a reminder of some of the things we have discussed.

At the beginning of the summer we discussed HEARING GOD’S VOICE. That is, putting ourselves in a position to hear from God himself.

This mainly focused us on scripture. We spent a week discussing studying scripture, and a week on meditation of scripture, we also spent a week discussing the memorization of scripture.

After HEARING GOD’S VOICE, we moved to HAVING GOD’S EAR.

We spent a couple of weeks discussing this as well. First week we talked about the hearts of prayer found in the Lord’s prayer.

And those were meant to be a target. Let me explain.

You see, in our spiritual lives, there are things that are bows, and things that are targets.

And we, in both situations…are the arrows.

Now, the bows in our spiritual lives are the things that send us out, spur us on, cause us to shoot from where we are, and to head to a new place.

This could be a particular message we’ve heard. A meeting with wise council. A scripture that spurred you on. So many things…but I think you know what I’m talking about.

So, there are bows in your life that propel you forward, but then there are also targets in your life. That is, things that direct you where to go. Give you something to steer your life towards. Scripture does this by setting an example, and Jesus himself is the ultimate target, right? Like, he is literally the thing we are aiming to become.

And our points about prayer are targets. They are things that we strive to have. When we pray, we want a heart of worship, expectation, confession, and dependence. Those are the targets. And two weeks ago we further practiced heading towards them…with our night of worship and prayer.

We got a chance to have, not only a great time of worship, but also a time of putting those hearts of prayer into practice.

Apps

Scripture

Routine (a spiritual discipline)

Writing (Apps)

Bullet Prayers (Length of prayer)

Good Ol’ Fashion Rob

Books (Valley of Vision) - Daily Spurgeon Prayer - List of Prayers

Prayer Walking

Join a Prayer Group

Unreached People Group

Couple it with Fasting