Really?!?Sample

Who Turned Off the Lights?

Being without power is no fun. I grew up in a part of the country where it didn’t just snow during the winter; it iced - a lot. While snow can be plowed, brushed off, and made into snowmen, ice just sits there and weighs heavily on the power lines until the inevitable happens.

One winter, we had an exceptionally bad ice storm, and you guessed it: the power went out. Unfortunately, this outage wasn't one that was fixed after a few fun hours of making shadow puppets with the flashlight. We were without power for a whole week. It was freezing without heat, difficult to do homework by candlelight, and stinky without hot water to take showers. It was an all-around bad situation.

While we can’t always rely on man-made power, prayer is the opportunity God gives us to live with reliable power every day. There are going to be ice storms that come into our lives, and we’re going to need the power that comes from prayer to face these troubles.

Prayer can be a difficult thing to understand and actually do. That’s why in each of these devotions on prayer, there are short prompts and questions to help you get started. As you make prayer a consistent part of your day, you will sense the power of God working in your life. They’re not always going to be the answers that you want, but they will always be the answers that you need in each and every situation. (If you’d like a great resource, Abide is a great app for guided prayer.)

Prayer Prompts:

• Thank God for giving you the opportunity to talk with Him about the troubles, difficulties, sorrows, successes, blessings, and praises in your life.
• Acknowledge that you don’t always understand the process of prayer and how it works, but that you trust Him to work powerfully in your life through all situations.
• Tell God the troubles you are facing today.
• Tell God the reasons you have to rejoice, and thank Him for the good things in your life.
• Share with God the concerns you have for other people, and ask Him to work in their specific situations (health, work, relationships, etc.).
• Ask God to forgive you for those times you have missed the mark.
• Finally, thank Him for hearing your prayer and giving you the power that you need.