Tag Archives: prayer

Challenge Day 5

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Oil-wick lantern hanging on a wall. Photo text: Challenge Day 5, #writinglifeaugustchallenge

Review. Last week I kicked off the Writing Life Challenge! The purpose of the challenge is to build an online community of people dedicated to encouraging each other daily and challenging each other to grow in our faith in Jesus. You can read more about my vision for the challenge here. Each day of the challenge has a bit of Bible-reading and prayer—and, ideally, communication with each other in the form of blog comments or Instagram posts using #writinglifeaugustchallenge.

On Day 1, the challenge topic was Thankfulness & Prayer.
On Day 2, the challenge topic was Praise & Prayer.
On Day 3, the challenge was Watchfulness & Prayer (my favorite so far!)
On Day 4, the challenge was Devotion & Prayer.

Today’s Inspiration. We’re continuing with the same verse for our inspiration, Colossians 4:2:

Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. (NIV)

Now that we’ve intentionally practiced using prayer to be thankful, to praise God for who he is, and to be watchful, and now that we’ve explored what it means to devote ourselves to something, we’ll take a step backward. We’ll examine how to pray, and take instruction from the best person to teach us this: Jesus.

Today’s Challenge. First, prepare to read God’s word by praying: pray that God will quiet your mind, help you to concentrate, help you to understand, and teach you what he wants you to learn today. Then read one or both of the accounts of the Lord’s Prayer in the gospels: Matthew 6:5-15, Luke 11:1-13.

As you read, write down things you notice about how Jesus instructs us to pray. Then dedicate a few minutes trying to pray as he instructs us to.

Today’s Participation. What did you notice or learn about how to pray as you read through the Lord’s Prayer? Tell us! Write about it in the comments below, or visualize it and write about it in your own Instagram post using the hashtag #writinglifeaugustchallenge. (I’ll see all posts made on public accounts, but not private accounts.)

Challenge Day 4

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Welcome to Day 4 of the Writing Life Challenge! My dream for this challenge is to start an online community of people dedicated to encouraging each other daily and challenging each other to grow in our faith in Jesus. If you’re just coming across the challenge, feel free to jump right in, either here or back at the very beginning (a very good place to start… Sorry. Sidetracked by a soundtrack in my head.)

Inspiration. The book of Colossians has been one of my favorite books of the Bible since my teen years. It’s full of advice for Christian living, and keeps giving advice right up until—and through!—the personal messages for individuals at the end. One of the instructional verses in the last chapter is Colossians 4:2, which says

Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. (NIV)

Today we will consider what it means to devote ourselves to prayer.

Close-up of a hummingbird feeder. Photo text: Challenge Day 4, devotion and prayer. #writinglifeaugustchallenge

Challenge. Today it’s your turn to do a little exploration of the Bible on your own. You probably already have an idea of what the word devote or devoted means (personally, I can’t get the song “Hopelessly Devoted To You” from the Grease soundtrack out of my head), but do you know how it’s used elsewhere in the Bible? Could knowing that give you a better understanding of the way it’s used in this verse?

Your task today is to search for other places the word devote or devoted is used in the Bible. (If you’re not sure how to do this, a good place to start is to look up Colossians 4:2 in Bible Hub and look at the list of related verses.) Then, pick a few of these to read and consider what it means to devote yourself to prayer. While you’re at it, don’t forget to pray! Pray that God will help you understand what is meant in this verse and in the others you read.

Participate. When you’re done, tell us what you read and learned in the comments below. Or, if you’d rather, visualize it in an Instagram post using the hashtag #writinglifeaugustchallenge!

Challenge Day 3

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It’s day three of the challenge! How are you keeping up? I’ll be honest—it’s a challenge for me (but I think that has to do with me writing the challenges along with doing them).

Review. Days 1 and 2 of the challenge had us thinking of communication with God through prayer—specifically, being deliberate about being thankful in prayer and praising and worshipping God through prayer. Each day, we read a Psalm to help us focus and then spent a few minutes in prayer. Communicating with God through prayer is one way we can grow in our faith—and it’s one of the simplest (or, perhaps for some, hardest) ways to start growing.

Inspiration. Our inspiration for these first few days of the challenge is (and has been) Colossians 4:2, in particular the words prayer and thankful:

Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. (NIV)

Today, let’s turn our attention to that little word watchful.

Antique lantern on a mantel. Photo text: Challenge Day 3, watchfulness & prayer. #writinglifeaugustchallenge

When I chose this verse a few days ago and came to that word, I skipped over it to the easier part. Thankfulness. There are numerous places to encounter people’s thankfulness, gratitude, gratefulness, etc.—but how many times in our society do we encounter the advice to be watchful? What does Paul (the author of this book of the Bible) even mean by this?

As I was exploring this idea, I turned to one of my favorite resources, https://biblehub.com/. If you haven’t ever used it, try it out! From there I read different versions of the verse, discovered several cross references for it, read different commentaries on it, and even delved into the Greek grammar for the original word used in the text. Basically, the idea of watchfulness here equates to alertness, and to some degree even wakefulness. It’s interesting to me that the Greek form of the word is a present participle active verb—in other words, it’s like an adjective and a verb put together, but one that indicates a continuous tense: Something not merely in the past, not merely in the present, not merely to do/be in the future, but something that should always be so. But it’s also active, meaning simply that there is action involved: it’s not just descriptive (as an adjective could be), but Paul is telling us to take action to BE watchful and alert.

But what are we to watch for? Why are we to be alert? That’s what we’ll explore in today’s challenge.

Challenge. There are two passages in the New Testament I think capture Paul’s intention when he tells us to be watchful in Colossians. Today’s challenge is to first pray that God will help you understand his word. God tells us that he will honor this type of prayer:

If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. (James 1:5, NIV)

Then, read through the passages: Matthew 26:36-46 takes place in the Garden of Gethsemane immediately before Jesus’ arrest. In it, he repeatedly asks the disciples to watch and pray with him. Ephesians 6:10-20 is the passage where Paul instructs the Ephesians to put on the full armor of God—and urges them to “be alert and always keep on praying.”

Participate. In a comment below or on the Instagram post for the challenge (@rhondalorraineblog), either describe what you think Paul is urging us to do with those two words “being watchful” or provide an example of a way to ensure we are being watchful. An alternative way to participate is to post a pic on Instagram using the tag #writinglifeaugustchallenge and use the caption for your description (I will see public posts, but not private ones).