Deeper Devotional TimesSample

Day 2 - Devotional Time and Prayer

Welcome back! How was your devotional time yesterday? We’re so glad that you're here again for Day 2 of making your devotional times the best that they can be. Today we are going to focus a little more on prayer and devotional times. 

As Christians, we need to be praying. Prayer connects us to God like nothing else. Imagine a phone call between you and a friend. You have a direct line of communication between the two of you. Prayer is the same thing. It opens up a line of communication between us and God. We can speak to Him and He can speak to us. There is truly nothing like it.

In Matthew 6, Jesus teaches us how to pray. He is telling people to not be like the hypocrites praying on the street corners (they're doing this so that people will see how good they are at praying), but to find our own space and pray with God privately. He also makes an example of the Gentiles (people who weren’t Jewish), saying that they believe their prayers are answered simply by repeating them over and over when in reality, God hears our prayers before we even pray them. 

Jesus then finishes this teaching by giving people a simple way to pray. We know this today as “The Lord's Prayer”. You know, the prayer that your grandparents used to pray? Yes, it’s that one, but don’t write it off too quickly! What Jesus is giving us is a really simple and easy structure of prayer. If we look deeper into what Jesus means by the prayer we could summarize it like this - 

God.
I honor and respect you so much.
Help me to live Your way.
Do what you need to do in my life.
Please look after me today.
Forgive me for everything that I do wrong.
Help me to quickly forgive those who do wrong against me.
Keep me away from things that lead to sin.
Keep me shielded from the devil and his lies.
You are the best thing in my world.
Amen.

Today’s devotional time - Take 10 minutes (still not that much!) and find some space by yourself where you won’t be distracted. Read over the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6, and then read over the one that we read through before. After that, take a few more minutes to pray with God. If you don’t feel comfortable praying, that’s okay! Just read over the Lord’s Prayer a couple of times and ask God to speak to you. Write down anything that you feel like He is speaking to you about. Enjoy!