I've come to the utter conviction that the place of prayer is the most contested place in life, both personally and corporately, in the church today.
We need to fight tooth and nail to see a culture of prayer restored to the church, so it will become a house of prayer for all nations once more.
I want to look at John 15:
Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.
The best decision you can make for your life is to choose to remain in Jesus, to orientate your life around Jesus.
I think we all love the idea of abiding with Jesus, but resonance doesn't equal obedience. What does it look like not just to have the idea we should do something, but to live it – to be people that sit with Jesus, remain with Jesus, have an intimacy with him, a communion with him?
C.S. Lewis wrote a really cool book called The Screwtape Letters,1 where this senior devil is discipling a junior devil to mess up the life of a Christian guy. And so, C.S. Lewis writes all these ways that this junior devil can try and mess up the life of the Christian.
Here's my theory: I reckon if C.S. Lewis was writing that book today, he would have a whole chapter on distracting people. And it would say, “We've got to distract those Christians so they don't spend time with that other guy. They do that, then we've lost them.”
“So, what can we do?” the other devil asks. And the senior one is like, “Well, how about we introduce a little device that they could live in their pocket, and at any point when they're bored, they could look at something and be distracted.”
And so, in 2007, the iPhone gets introduced, right? We're talking about over a two trillion dollar industry in your pockets. So, when you think about principalities and powers, you've got a two trillion dollar principality and power that wants to take any portal of prayer or boredom and entertain you.
Theologian Ronald Rolheiser says that “we are distracting ourselves into spiritual oblivion”.2
If people stop praying, the downstream implications are enormous on every single level – when it comes to mission, the kingdom of God, future leaders, serving the poor. It begins with a life of prayer.
If we are disciples of Jesus, we've got to recognise that he was deeply committed to a life of prayer. You'll find it in Scripture time after time after time when Jesus himself prays.
Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. (Mark 1:35)
Yet the news about him spread all the more, so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses. But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. (Luke 5:15-16)
Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd. After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. (Matthew 14:22-23)
He loved going to the secret place to be with his father.
Go through the Gospels and every time you see Jesus praying, note where it is and what's happening – you'll pick up that before or after any major decision, ministry or point of crisis, Jesus goes to the secret place to pray. Same with the early church in Acts.
The book of Acts has been called a commentary between prayer meetings in the early church.
They all joined together constantly in prayer… (Acts 1:14)
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. (Acts 2:42)
Why? Because they saw Jesus doing it.
So, how do we move there?
Everything I need is found in the secret place.
All that I need to get through any season of life is found in the secret place.
When you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. (Matthew 6:6)
Bob Sorge wrote a beautiful book called Secrets of the Secret Place. It's well worth a read. And in the intro, he says, “One of the best kept secrets of our faith is the blessedness and joy of cultivating a secret life with God.”
Imagine the sheer delight of it even now … Jesus himself stands at your side; the Holy Spirit is gently washing your heart; your love is awakened as you meditate upon the gracious words of His mouth; your spirit is ignited and your mind is renewed; you talk to him, and he talks to you in the language of intimate friendship.3
Often I'm just like, "Where are you, God?" And God's like, "Where are you? Running around like crazy? All you do is pray on the go. I'm in the secret place, I'm waiting for you to turn up.”
When we're not drawing on the divine resources that God has given us, there are massive consequences to the state of our soul and the missional fruit of our life.
N.T. Wright said this:
Most people pray at least sometimes. Some people in many very different religious traditions pray a great deal. At its lowest, prayer is shouting into a void on the off chance there might be someone out there listening. At its highest, prayer merges into love as the presence of God becomes so real that we pass beyond words and into a sense of His reality and generosity and delight and grace. For most Christians most of the time, it takes place somewhere in between those two extremes. To be frank, for many people, it's not just a mystery but a puzzle. They know they ought to pray, but they're not sure quite how.4
It's interesting that the disciples come to Jesus and asked him to teach them how to pray. They grew up in a culture of prayer.
Jewish people stopped a number of times throughout the day to pray. So the disciples grew up in a culture that prayed every day, on the regular, and when they see something in the life of Jesus so profoundly beautiful in prayer, they ask him to teach them.
Jesus replies to them, and he's like, "When you pray, shoot from the hip, just see what the Holy Spirit says, and just kind of flow with the vibe that you're going on that day. God bless you, you'll be great."
He doesn't say that, does he?
He gives them a structure – he teaches him a prayer, the Lord’s Prayer.
Anglicans are great at having liturgy, having set prayers. I used to look down on that sort of thing – even though I’m a vicar’s kid – like they’re kind of dead. But then I thought about how Jesus taught us to pray things like the Lord’s Prayer.
Before I started using some structure to my prayer life, I would do what everyone does. When I was angry, I'd pray angry prayers. When I was fearful, I'd pray fearful prayers. When I was feeling greedy, which is a lot of the time, I'd pray greedy prayers.
Jesus gave the disciples a set prayer. The Bible's filled with prayers. And then the church, in its wisdom over the years, has crafted prayers that are better than you or I could pray. And so I pray those prayers every single day.
Now, I'm still led by the Spirit. I still pray in tongues. Sometimes I’ll use the Lord’s Prayer to start riffing off.
Set prayers can help shape our prayer lives. These prayers resist the hyper-individualisation and privatisation of the Christian faith. When I started using them I just saw myself going deeper and deeper in prayer.
If your prayer life is a bit wobbly, here's a structure I can suggest:
Start doing something short on the regular. This will take you 10 minutes, and by the time you're done with this, you'll feel amazing in your soul.
Silence might sound hard because we’ve all got the attention spans of a squirrel. But there’s this great line, something along the lines of:
Because here's the thing: consistency trumps intensity.
After a while, it becomes this place of incredible communion and intimacy with Jesus.
We started pushing prayer hard in our church. We decided we were going to make this a massive priority, we were going to teach people how to pray.
After a while, I realised this was great, but actually, it wasn’t enough. Particularly for Gen Y and younger, because I cannot overstate how addicted we are to distraction.
So we started thinking, how about we start holding each other gently accountable to our devotional life?
What I realised is that we have our private life with Jesus and then our public community of faith. But what we need is a Venn diagram moment where the two collide, where we normalise conversation about the most important spiritual discipline there is.
The change that has happened in the last five years I cannot overstate. We realised we needed Alcoholics Anonymous levels of accountability if we were to fight for the secret place for Gen Y and younger. So we started meeting in groups – they’re all over our church now, but we just started with a few guys – to hold each other accountable. All normal people: plumbers, builders, teachers, butchers, candlestick makers, all the rest of it.
Initially, it would just be everyone saying things like, “Nothing's happening, but I'm gonna try, you know?” But after a couple of years we found staying consistent with accountability made us grow. The data is unequivocal about the power of accountability, which is why AA works.
As we would go around the circle, there would always be one guy who'd been struggling for months to have a quiet time, but he’d finally crack through into the transcending glory of God that week and he’d just be lit up. And the person who had confessed the fact that they'd struggled that week would be re-inspired. They’d think, "This is why I'm fighting for prayer."
We've normalised this in our church now to the point where I can just ask just about anyone. I love it. I'll be out surfing, see one of the boys, have a yarn about whatever, and then ask, “Mate, so how are the devos going?” “Oh yeah, bro, I had a bit of a wobble last week, but I'm back on the wagon today.”
We have these accountability groups all over our church now because we're serious about fighting for the secret place.
The missional fruit that flew out of this was unbelievable. It's the stuff pastors dream about. John 15 is true: it all flows from abiding and remaining with him.
It's not birthed out of some sermon or inspirational moment, it's birthed out of the secret place. It moves from being a discipline that you've got to have in your life to an absolute delight.
In John 15, Jesus talks about fruit, but what is that fruit according to John 15?
As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. (15:9)
I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. (15:11)
I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. (16:33)
Interestingly, Galatians 5 says the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy and peace. Jesus is actually saying when you abide and remain in him, you will experience love, joy and peace.
Imagine for a second what your soul feels like when it's filled with love, filled with joy, filled with peace. Isn't that everything your soul longs for? Isn't that what every bit of advertising is trying to sell you? It's found in the secret place.
When I first got my head around this, I thought, how could you not be passionate about prayer if this is what results?
It doesn't happen overnight, but it does happen. Formation is slow, but it will happen.
Love
I was on a week-long silent retreat about 20 years ago. It took a couple days to slow down, but I eventually chilled out and I started experiencing the love of God in a very, very visceral way. Like, liquid love. So I was just in tears for the rest of the two and a half days, overwhelmed with the presence of God. It was absolutely incredible.
At one point I felt God clearly say, “Sam, your experience of my love for you right now is like the water in that little cup, maybe one of those little cups half full. That's what you're experiencing of My love. But My love for you is like this.” And I looked out the window and saw the ocean.
I needed that. You need that.
It puts our careers in the right place. It helps us live a life of cruciform love for others. We have to experience it to know that love that's found in the secret place.
Joy
Joy is the serious business of heaven.
“Rejoice always, pray continually.” How interesting how they're connected in 1 Thessalonians, like joy is found in his presence.
I used to have a 10-minute drive to work, which was 10 minutes to listen to something in the car. Every now and then, I'd think, I just can't be bothered being a good Christian. I'm not listening to Hillsong. I just gotta listen to some Hamish and Andy. So I'd put them on and just have a giggle as I drove from one intense meeting to the next intense meeting.
I remember clearly a moment when God said, "I love this. I love that you're laughing and I want you to position yourself in places of joy as often as you can so it becomes your experienced reality rather than the fleeting exception to the rule."
He's the God of joy.
It's a stupid dualistic worldview where we classify what’s spiritual and what's not spiritual. Anything that's cultivating joy is a kingdom fruit. It's from him, flowing through whatever vessel.
What fills you with joy in a stressed out, depressed, cynical world? People with joy are counter-cultural. Where's that found? In the secret place.
Peace
Oh, don't we need that now?
We've got to go to the secret place, sit in that portal of peace, and find a refuge in him.
Sometimes, life can be intense and stressful and horrible and I ask, God, get me out of this.
“Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace” (Colossians 3:15).
You can go to church for 20 years but be a one-year-old Christian who's been in church for 20 years, because you haven't fought for the discipleship journey. Your life every year should increasingly be a little bit more oriented around being with Jesus, becoming like Jesus, and doing what Jesus did.
So if you want to see your church changed, then pray, Lord, start with me.
You become like who you hang out with, so I want to hang out with the source of all love, all joy, all peace. I want to hang out with him so that I can be transformed into his image.
The kingdom of God looks like love, joy and peace flowing out of you into the broken world around us. We so often want to try to give this away when we're not embodying it ourselves.
And how do you do that? You change your lifestyle so that prayer isn't something you bolt on, but it's the priority of your life, so that you increasingly are permeated with love, joy and peace.
He wants to actually sit with you and to help you imagine what it should look like. What does it look like to go to the secret place? What does it look like tomorrow morning? What does it look like on Tuesday morning? And to get excited about that, to actually begin planning what it's going to look like, really practically.
It's not the information that's going to change you, it's the application that's going to bring the transformation. Work with the Holy Spirit to put some plans in place.
It's a yoke that'll fit you well. This isn't a thing of being a good Christian, this is being yoked to the one whose yoke is easy. His burden is light, and he gives rest for your souls.
1C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, Geoffrey Bles, 1942.
2Ronald Rolheiser, The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality, Image, 1999.
3Bob Sorge, Secrets of the Secret Place: Keys to Igniting Your Personal Time With God, Oasis House, 2001.
4Tom Wright, New Testament Prayer for Everyone, SPCK, 2012.
5Mark Sayers, Reappearing Church: The Hope for Renewal in the Rise of Our Post-Christian Culture, Moody Press, 2019.
Check out other articles in the
series below.
More articles in the
series are to come.
We have invited these writers to share their experiences, ideas and opinions in the hope that these will provoke thought, challenge you to go deeper and inspire you to put your faith into action. These articles should not be taken as the official view of the Nelson Diocese on any particular matter.
I've come to the utter conviction that the place of prayer is the most contested place in life, both personally and corporately, in the church today.
We need to fight tooth and nail to see a culture of prayer restored to the church, so it will become a house of prayer for all nations once more.
I want to look at John 15:
Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.
The best decision you can make for your life is to choose to remain in Jesus, to orientate your life around Jesus.
I think we all love the idea of abiding with Jesus, but resonance doesn't equal obedience. What does it look like not just to have the idea we should do something, but to live it – to be people that sit with Jesus, remain with Jesus, have an intimacy with him, a communion with him?
C.S. Lewis wrote a really cool book called The Screwtape Letters,1 where this senior devil is discipling a junior devil to mess up the life of a Christian guy. And so, C.S. Lewis writes all these ways that this junior devil can try and mess up the life of the Christian.
Here's my theory: I reckon if C.S. Lewis was writing that book today, he would have a whole chapter on distracting people. And it would say, “We've got to distract those Christians so they don't spend time with that other guy. They do that, then we've lost them.”
“So, what can we do?” the other devil asks. And the senior one is like, “Well, how about we introduce a little device that they could live in their pocket, and at any point when they're bored, they could look at something and be distracted.”
And so, in 2007, the iPhone gets introduced, right? We're talking about over a two trillion dollar industry in your pockets. So, when you think about principalities and powers, you've got a two trillion dollar principality and power that wants to take any portal of prayer or boredom and entertain you.
Theologian Ronald Rolheiser says that “we are distracting ourselves into spiritual oblivion”.2
If people stop praying, the downstream implications are enormous on every single level – when it comes to mission, the kingdom of God, future leaders, serving the poor. It begins with a life of prayer.
If we are disciples of Jesus, we've got to recognise that he was deeply committed to a life of prayer. You'll find it in Scripture time after time after time when Jesus himself prays.
Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. (Mark 1:35)
Yet the news about him spread all the more, so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses. But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. (Luke 5:15-16)
Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd. After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. (Matthew 14:22-23)
He loved going to the secret place to be with his father.
Go through the Gospels and every time you see Jesus praying, note where it is and what's happening – you'll pick up that before or after any major decision, ministry or point of crisis, Jesus goes to the secret place to pray. Same with the early church in Acts.
The book of Acts has been called a commentary between prayer meetings in the early church.
They all joined together constantly in prayer… (Acts 1:14)
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. (Acts 2:42)
Why? Because they saw Jesus doing it.
So, how do we move there?
Everything I need is found in the secret place.
All that I need to get through any season of life is found in the secret place.
When you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. (Matthew 6:6)
Bob Sorge wrote a beautiful book called Secrets of the Secret Place. It's well worth a read. And in the intro, he says, “One of the best kept secrets of our faith is the blessedness and joy of cultivating a secret life with God.”
Imagine the sheer delight of it even now … Jesus himself stands at your side; the Holy Spirit is gently washing your heart; your love is awakened as you meditate upon the gracious words of His mouth; your spirit is ignited and your mind is renewed; you talk to him, and he talks to you in the language of intimate friendship.3
Often I'm just like, "Where are you, God?" And God's like, "Where are you? Running around like crazy? All you do is pray on the go. I'm in the secret place, I'm waiting for you to turn up.”
When we're not drawing on the divine resources that God has given us, there are massive consequences to the state of our soul and the missional fruit of our life.
N.T. Wright said this:
Most people pray at least sometimes. Some people in many very different religious traditions pray a great deal. At its lowest, prayer is shouting into a void on the off chance there might be someone out there listening. At its highest, prayer merges into love as the presence of God becomes so real that we pass beyond words and into a sense of His reality and generosity and delight and grace. For most Christians most of the time, it takes place somewhere in between those two extremes. To be frank, for many people, it's not just a mystery but a puzzle. They know they ought to pray, but they're not sure quite how.4
It's interesting that the disciples come to Jesus and asked him to teach them how to pray. They grew up in a culture of prayer.
Jewish people stopped a number of times throughout the day to pray. So the disciples grew up in a culture that prayed every day, on the regular, and when they see something in the life of Jesus so profoundly beautiful in prayer, they ask him to teach them.
Jesus replies to them, and he's like, "When you pray, shoot from the hip, just see what the Holy Spirit says, and just kind of flow with the vibe that you're going on that day. God bless you, you'll be great."
He doesn't say that, does he?
He gives them a structure – he teaches him a prayer, the Lord’s Prayer.
Anglicans are great at having liturgy, having set prayers. I used to look down on that sort of thing – even though I’m a vicar’s kid – like they’re kind of dead. But then I thought about how Jesus taught us to pray things like the Lord’s Prayer.
Before I started using some structure to my prayer life, I would do what everyone does. When I was angry, I'd pray angry prayers. When I was fearful, I'd pray fearful prayers. When I was feeling greedy, which is a lot of the time, I'd pray greedy prayers.
Jesus gave the disciples a set prayer. The Bible's filled with prayers. And then the church, in its wisdom over the years, has crafted prayers that are better than you or I could pray. And so I pray those prayers every single day.
Now, I'm still led by the Spirit. I still pray in tongues. Sometimes I’ll use the Lord’s Prayer to start riffing off.
Set prayers can help shape our prayer lives. These prayers resist the hyper-individualisation and privatisation of the Christian faith. When I started using them I just saw myself going deeper and deeper in prayer.
If your prayer life is a bit wobbly, here's a structure I can suggest:
Start doing something short on the regular. This will take you 10 minutes, and by the time you're done with this, you'll feel amazing in your soul.
Silence might sound hard because we’ve all got the attention spans of a squirrel. But there’s this great line, something along the lines of:
Because here's the thing: consistency trumps intensity.
After a while, it becomes this place of incredible communion and intimacy with Jesus.
We started pushing prayer hard in our church. We decided we were going to make this a massive priority, we were going to teach people how to pray.
After a while, I realised this was great, but actually, it wasn’t enough. Particularly for Gen Y and younger, because I cannot overstate how addicted we are to distraction.
So we started thinking, how about we start holding each other gently accountable to our devotional life?
What I realised is that we have our private life with Jesus and then our public community of faith. But what we need is a Venn diagram moment where the two collide, where we normalise conversation about the most important spiritual discipline there is.
The change that has happened in the last five years I cannot overstate. We realised we needed Alcoholics Anonymous levels of accountability if we were to fight for the secret place for Gen Y and younger. So we started meeting in groups – they’re all over our church now, but we just started with a few guys – to hold each other accountable. All normal people: plumbers, builders, teachers, butchers, candlestick makers, all the rest of it.
Initially, it would just be everyone saying things like, “Nothing's happening, but I'm gonna try, you know?” But after a couple of years we found staying consistent with accountability made us grow. The data is unequivocal about the power of accountability, which is why AA works.
As we would go around the circle, there would always be one guy who'd been struggling for months to have a quiet time, but he’d finally crack through into the transcending glory of God that week and he’d just be lit up. And the person who had confessed the fact that they'd struggled that week would be re-inspired. They’d think, "This is why I'm fighting for prayer."
We've normalised this in our church now to the point where I can just ask just about anyone. I love it. I'll be out surfing, see one of the boys, have a yarn about whatever, and then ask, “Mate, so how are the devos going?” “Oh yeah, bro, I had a bit of a wobble last week, but I'm back on the wagon today.”
We have these accountability groups all over our church now because we're serious about fighting for the secret place.
The missional fruit that flew out of this was unbelievable. It's the stuff pastors dream about. John 15 is true: it all flows from abiding and remaining with him.
It's not birthed out of some sermon or inspirational moment, it's birthed out of the secret place. It moves from being a discipline that you've got to have in your life to an absolute delight.
In John 15, Jesus talks about fruit, but what is that fruit according to John 15?
As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. (15:9)
I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. (15:11)
I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. (16:33)
Interestingly, Galatians 5 says the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy and peace. Jesus is actually saying when you abide and remain in him, you will experience love, joy and peace.
Imagine for a second what your soul feels like when it's filled with love, filled with joy, filled with peace. Isn't that everything your soul longs for? Isn't that what every bit of advertising is trying to sell you? It's found in the secret place.
When I first got my head around this, I thought, how could you not be passionate about prayer if this is what results?
It doesn't happen overnight, but it does happen. Formation is slow, but it will happen.
Love
I was on a week-long silent retreat about 20 years ago. It took a couple days to slow down, but I eventually chilled out and I started experiencing the love of God in a very, very visceral way. Like, liquid love. So I was just in tears for the rest of the two and a half days, overwhelmed with the presence of God. It was absolutely incredible.
At one point I felt God clearly say, “Sam, your experience of my love for you right now is like the water in that little cup, maybe one of those little cups half full. That's what you're experiencing of My love. But My love for you is like this.” And I looked out the window and saw the ocean.
I needed that. You need that.
It puts our careers in the right place. It helps us live a life of cruciform love for others. We have to experience it to know that love that's found in the secret place.
Joy
Joy is the serious business of heaven.
“Rejoice always, pray continually.” How interesting how they're connected in 1 Thessalonians, like joy is found in his presence.
I used to have a 10-minute drive to work, which was 10 minutes to listen to something in the car. Every now and then, I'd think, I just can't be bothered being a good Christian. I'm not listening to Hillsong. I just gotta listen to some Hamish and Andy. So I'd put them on and just have a giggle as I drove from one intense meeting to the next intense meeting.
I remember clearly a moment when God said, "I love this. I love that you're laughing and I want you to position yourself in places of joy as often as you can so it becomes your experienced reality rather than the fleeting exception to the rule."
He's the God of joy.
It's a stupid dualistic worldview where we classify what’s spiritual and what's not spiritual. Anything that's cultivating joy is a kingdom fruit. It's from him, flowing through whatever vessel.
What fills you with joy in a stressed out, depressed, cynical world? People with joy are counter-cultural. Where's that found? In the secret place.
Peace
Oh, don't we need that now?
We've got to go to the secret place, sit in that portal of peace, and find a refuge in him.
Sometimes, life can be intense and stressful and horrible and I ask, God, get me out of this.
“Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace” (Colossians 3:15).
You can go to church for 20 years but be a one-year-old Christian who's been in church for 20 years, because you haven't fought for the discipleship journey. Your life every year should increasingly be a little bit more oriented around being with Jesus, becoming like Jesus, and doing what Jesus did.
So if you want to see your church changed, then pray, Lord, start with me.
You become like who you hang out with, so I want to hang out with the source of all love, all joy, all peace. I want to hang out with him so that I can be transformed into his image.
The kingdom of God looks like love, joy and peace flowing out of you into the broken world around us. We so often want to try to give this away when we're not embodying it ourselves.
And how do you do that? You change your lifestyle so that prayer isn't something you bolt on, but it's the priority of your life, so that you increasingly are permeated with love, joy and peace.
He wants to actually sit with you and to help you imagine what it should look like. What does it look like to go to the secret place? What does it look like tomorrow morning? What does it look like on Tuesday morning? And to get excited about that, to actually begin planning what it's going to look like, really practically.
It's not the information that's going to change you, it's the application that's going to bring the transformation. Work with the Holy Spirit to put some plans in place.
It's a yoke that'll fit you well. This isn't a thing of being a good Christian, this is being yoked to the one whose yoke is easy. His burden is light, and he gives rest for your souls.
Check out other articles in the
series below.
More articles in the
series are to come.
