Lent: A Journey Through 7 Spiritual DisciplinesSample

Week Two: Prayer

“You cannot estimate prayer power. Prayer is as vast as God because He is behind it. Prayer is as mighty as God because He has committed Himself to answer it” (Leonard Ravenhill).

If one of the purposes of Lent is to have a deeper, more authentic relationship with God, then prayer must be a cornerstone discipline. Yet, a powerful prayer life can be difficult to develop. Wrought with self-loathing, weariness, doubt, and disbelief, so many Christians struggle with prayer.

Matthew 6:8 describes that God knows our every need before we ask. So why do we need to pray? We pray because prayer is the expression of an intimate relationship with God, an ongoing dialogue that brings Christ into every detail of our lives. Prayer can feel risky because it requires two things of us: trust in God’s goodness and submission to His sovereignty. Prayer is the alignment of our heart to His.

Prayer expresses itself through our words, meditations, and actions. Whether it’s prayers of petition, gratitude, power, sorrow, or repentance, we know that God hears us: “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us” (1 John 5:14, NIV).

This begs the question: why do so many prayers appear to go unanswered? Scripture has various answers for this, including the timing of God and His will, but the most compelling is that we face an enemy that blocks, diverts, and steals our prayers.

A strong prayer life is not a destination but rather an infinite exploration of the heart of God. You are always a student of prayer because God uses it as a vehicle to reveal Himself to you. Even the apostles were ongoing students of prayer, and through their hunger to learn, we receive the most sacred prayer of all time: the Lord’s Prayer (Luke 11:1–4).

During this Lenten season, as you meditate on Christ’s journey to the cross, start an open dialogue with God and begin the adventure of a lifetime through prayer.

1. What keeps you from intimate prayer? What are blocks that you may have in prayer? Invite God into those spaces and ask Him to bring down those strongholds.
2. How do you think God uses prayer?
3. Are there good and bad prayers?