It’s a new year, a new day and another opportunity to make known our intentions. What are our intentions regarding our relationship with God? Are we content with what we have made known to Him this past year, how we have lived, how we have treated each other in plain sight of His omnipresence? Have we lived like God is watching? Many of us are not living as we should nor treating each other as we should. But thank God, in His loving and gracious power, He has allowed us another opportunity for a ‘do over’.

Let us make God smile in this moment of our lives. Let’s make our good intentions known to God, beginning with a refreshed prayer life, starting right now, in this moment. Yes, I feel in my spirit a sense of urgency on the matter of prayer. I’m talking about a naked, humble approach to prayer that gets God’s attention. Not the rehearsed, puffed up, bogus, uncommitted prayers we try to fool our omniscient God with.  God is not pleased with prayers of trickery, and truth be told, those who are likened to those prayers are getting weary, realizing the return on such prayers does not yield a lasting positive return. Forgive us Lord! Renew the right spirit within us this day and the days to come! The Bible says in Jeremiah 29:12-14:

“When you call on me, when you come and pray to me, I’ll listen. “When you come looking for me, you’ll find me.“Yes, when you get serious about finding me and want it more than anything else, I’ll make sure you won’t be disappointed.” God’s Decree (The Message Bible)

It is with this inspiration that God has led me to focus on prayer in my Hump Day Helpers; specifically Prayer Assignments. Life has gotten to be tiresome, worrisome, stressful, confusing, challenging, painful and down-right difficult for many of us. Sometimes, we are so overwhelmed with life that we pray without hope or belief, forget to pray, don’t know what or how to pray or simply refuse to pray. We must change that! Prayer is our ‘All Access Pass’ to God.  Let’s put it to good use.

This Week’s Prayer Assignment:

Pray for your neighbor. Instead of talking about and fussing about the neighbor who lives across the street, next door, up the street, down the street, upstairs, downstairs, across the hall, in the next building; pray for them, their family, their challenges (seen and unseen), their peace and joy. Pray God’s delivering power over whatever they shall face in coming days, God’s saving power over their lives and God’s peace that passes all understanding, in the mighty and matchless name of Jesus!

Prayer works! Complete the prayer assignment and watch God move in our midst. You can do this!