Living Fervently
An adventure in strengthening your prayerful connection with God
When I was young (meaning up until high school), our family morning routine was fairly simple. I would sleep blissfully until dad came to tell me I was next in line for the shower, meaning I had about 7 more minutes to “rest my eyes.” Of course I would fall back to sleep until he beckoned with a second wake up call. He had already been up for an hour or more, pouring over his Bible and spending time in prayer. (I am not exactly sure how I knew that, since I was always asleep, but I suppose kids just pick up on these things).
Around 10-years-old I wanted to have my own devotional time and decided first thing in the morning was a great idea. Dad would wake me up and while I was waiting for the shower I would reach for my Bible and sit up in my cozy bed. I would struggle to keep my eyes open long enough to read a short passage and then willingly close them “for prayer.” You can imagine how my prayers went.
I’d like to say I quickly learned that the combination of sleepy eyes and staying in bed was ineffective for my goals of developing a serious prayer time. But fast-forward to high school and morning devotions were still being carried out from the comfort of my bed. I did, however, modify one aspect. I began writing out my prayers. There are plenty of scribbled pages amongst my collection of journals that show it is still possible to fall asleep while writing, but that happened much less frequently.
Now that I think about it, I had devotions from my bed all the way up to the time I got married and moved into our apartment. In college I preferred sitting on the bed because my desk was reserved for studying and was not an ideal mental space for worship. In order to be more awake, I would shower first and then start devotions, which was fairly effective other than the one time I pulled an all-nighter and then all bets were off.
For the last three or so years I have enjoyed morning worships from the comfort of my living room. I still shower first, to help me wake up. Some mornings the pen still drifts across the pages as my head bobs, but that is less frequent now that I am out of grad school and sleeping better. These first 30-or-so minutes each morning are precious. But there are times when I feel like I am wasting them.
My prayers often feel stale, impersonal, and I forget the passages I read within the first few minutes of heading into the day. So I am working on changing that. Cue Fervent by Pricilla Shirer. I first read through this book in college and remember being drawn in by the strategic approach to developing a battle plan for prayer. However, I did not purposefully implement what I had learned. As my life has shifted over the last 4 years, I noticed there are so many things I want to seriously pray for. I am tired of reciting the same requests, superficially repeating myself, without diving deep during my conversations with God. Shirer presents 10 areas of our lives the enemy attacks and 10 strategies to counteract his plots through prayer. Each chapter ends with an invitation to create specific, detailed prayers shrouded with Biblical promises to fortify our spiritual lives.
As I read through this book I will be posting my thoughts and responses to each of the 10 strategies. Feel free to come along for the journey, which will hopefully be a weekly one! I’d encourage you to read along with me, as each of us can benefit from a deeper prayer life. So grab your Bible, fresh lemon water or a steaming cup of coffee, a new journal (celebrate the excuse to by yet another one, but make sure you use it this time!) and lets get started.
