Introduction

We are so glad you are joining us for these daily prayer posts. Over the next four weeks we are going to listen to the prayers of the Bible, and the saints of God. Their prayers are going to teach us how to pray.

Each devotion will take five to seven minutes of your time.

1. We will look at an insight from those who know something important about prayer.
2. We will listen to the prayers of people in the Bible—people just like us. And to people who gained a deep measure of spiritual intimacy with God because they prayed.
3. We will reflect, asking the same four questions each day that invites us to look and listen with intent.
4. And we will pray, for it is in praying that we learn to pray. And it is in praying that the Spirit changes our hearts.

May we encourage you to grab a notebook, a journal, something to write on as you do each prayer guide. Yes, it will add a few minutes to the time it takes to do the devotion, and it will also deepen your experience and shape your walk with God for years to come.

Look

When you pray to God, you are talking to someone you can’t see. So, prayer is the purest form of faith, which is described as “being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1). Yet the faith of prayer is not based on vivid imagination or wishful thinking. It is based on the promises of God found in the Bible.”

Elizabeth George, Author and Bible Teacher

Listen

Habakkuk was a prophet, but he did not speak to the people, he simply spoke to God. Thus, the entire book that bears his name is actually a record of his personal struggle with God –what we call a lament – a visceral complaint to God and plea for His action. Habakkuk lived in some of the darkest days of Israel’s history. Things were never “good” in his lifetime. And that makes the conclusion to his prayer in chapter three all the more amazing, and all the more needed in our own “dark days.” His is a prayer… of faith…

Habakkuk 3:17–19

¹⁷ Though the fig tree should not blossom,
    nor fruit be on the vines,
the produce of the olive fail
    and the fields yield no food,
the flock be cut off from the fold
    and there be no herd in the stalls,
¹⁸ yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
    I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
¹⁹ God, the Lord, is my strength;
    he makes my feet like the deer’s;
    he makes me tread on my high places.

To the choirmaster: with stringed instruments.

Reflect

1. Having read the Word, sit silently for a minute and give God’s Word a moment to settle within you.
2. Re-read the verses slowly and write down some thoughts that resonate with you.
3. Ask the Spirit to help you see the deeper longings, desires or motives in your heart that those thoughts are pointing to. (for example: you may write down, “Habakkuk’s ends his prayer speaking of God’s sovereignty.” The Spirit can help us see that we desire to know, deep down, that the even if “the worst thing happens” – it does not…it cannot negate God’s faithfulness.)
4. What are some elements of Habakkuk’s prayer of faith that resonate with your own heart where you are today?

Pray

Using this last phrase in Habakkuk’s prayer of lament and faith, allow his words to become your own in your prayer today.