Point to Ponder: As your group prayers together, your faith will be strengthened, and God’s power will be unleashed.
Verse to Remember: “They all met together continually for prayer…” — Acts 1:14 (NLT)
Question to Consider: How high a priority is prayer in your group life?
[Read More] thoughts on Day 38 of Rick Warren’s 40 Days of Community.

As I’m mentioned before, I struggle with spending consistent time in personal prayer, though ironically (and perhaps worryingly) I am extremely comfortable praying in public. Thus, I was interested to see what this lesson might say to me.

Two points really jumped out at me. The first is Rick’s observation that the reason Jesus’ disciples asked him to teach them to pray is that they had trouble praying. I know, shocking, but I realized I had always interpreted that as referring to mechanism: i.e., that they were already praying a lot, and just needed to know how. But, maybe they struggled like I do (after all, these were the guys who turned Quiet Time into Nap Time at Gethsemene), so Jesus was (also) explaining the motivation for praying. I’ll have to think about that some more.

The other point is that prayer requires bringing our real needs to God. It suddenly struck me that maybe the reason I have trouble praying is that I don’t have a real awareness of my real needs, or of God’s ability to supply them. Or, to put it into apothegm form:

Practically speaking, it means that I need to spend time meditating on God’s power and love, in order to create a safe environment for surfacing my neediness, that I might bring it into God’s presence for healing and completion.

[Note: I was interrupted before writing the prayer, and had to leave immediately after, which is why this devotional ends early].