A New Prayer. This is difficult for me to grasp. The biggest key to our spiritual growth is developing healthy and holy practices that we interpret as spiritual disciplines. This can be a gamut of things from reading our Bible when we wake in the morning or maybe before we go to bed. Diving into a devotional that we read daily or praying at 1pm everyday. However, we need to be mindful of what we are doing and why! Good practices can become bad routines if we don’t change it up from time to time. It’s like going through the motions, mindlessly.

At church this morning, our Pastor Mark Clark was AWOL. Well, I’m sure it was a planned absence but needless to say, we had a different Pastor, Brandon Short. He definitely was not whom I expected but wow, did he shake things up! We are studying the Book of Acts and we learned much about being mindful of who we are worshipping. Mark Clark and Brandon Short, are a far cry from Jesus. But if we’re not careful, we can start worshipping the wrong Father. Bayside taught me a great lesson. It’s good practice to learn from others, and each pastor has a certain gifting that God blessed them with. Changing teachers opened my eyes, ears and heart to the Lord in new ways. It was a profound message and an important lesson that God is on the throne, not my pastor!

What I have been doing these past four weeks, has been a change of routine. Reading this book “Draw the Circle” has been a commitment to me, to my friends but especially to the Lord. He has opened my soul to a new way of seeing Him, to a relationship that is so real and tangible, and to a place that I want to continue pursuing.

Now when I pray, I desire to understand why I am praying and to whom I am praying! Changing your routine is something I was taught in the Highway Patrol. We can easily fall into a trap of routine, a series of actions or inactions, and become content in that. Change is hard but it is crucial, if not essential for our continuous spiritual growth. The Lord wants our worship, but with our imagination and our unique personality. He wants our heart and He wants nothing left unsaid. Maybe next time when I pray, I might sing a praise. The psalmist tells us to sing a new song, not once but six times. I betcha God may love to hear a new lyric from our lips. Just like the song bird singing outside my window.

“And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”
‭‭Matthew‬ ‭6‬:‭6‬-‭8‬ ‭