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January 29 - February 2, 2023
Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before.
He had the ability to pray with urgency about things that weren’t urgent.
My advice: Stop, drop, and pray. Keep circling. Circle for seventy years if you have to! What else are you going to do? Where else are you going to turn? What other options do you have? Pray through.
We love a good night’s sleep, but sleepless nights are what define our lives. If you’re going to bring kings to their knees or shut the mouths of lions, sometimes you need to pull an all-nighter.
We won’t remember the things that came easy; we’ll remember the things that came hard. We’ll remember the miracles on the far side of “long and boring.”
Daniel didn’t just pray when he had a bad day; he prayed every day. He didn’t just dial up 911 prayers when he was in a lions’ den; prayer was part of the rhythm and routine of his life. Prayer was his life, and his life was a prayer.
The ascendance of Daniel defies political science, but it defines the power of prayer circles. Prayer invites God into the equation, and when that happens, all bets are off.
Posture is to prayer as tone is to communication.
The physical posture of kneeling, coupled with a humble heart, is the most powerful position on earth.
All I know is this: Humility honors God, and God honors humility.
We begin with hands facing down, symbolizing the things we need to let go of. It involves a process of confessing our sins, rebuking our fears, and relinquishing control. Then we turn our hands over so they are facing up in a posture of receptivity. We actively receive what God wants to give — joy unspeakable, peace that transcends understanding, and unmerited grace. We receive the fruit and gifts of His Spirit with open hands and open hearts.
One thing I know for sure: Biblical traditions never go out of style. They are as relevant now as they were in ancient times. And when we practice the prayer postures prescribed in Scripture, it helps us dream big, pray hard, and think long.
It also testifies to the fact that we had better be good stewards of the things we allow into our visual and auditory cortices. Everything we see and hear is priming us in a positive or negative way. That’s one reason I believe in starting the day in God’s Word. It doesn’t just prime our minds; it also primes our hearts. It’s doesn’t just prime us spiritually; it also primes us emotionally and relationally. When we read the words that the Holy Spirit inspired, it tunes us to His voice and primes us for His promptings.
Prayer is priming. Prayer puts us in a spiritual frame of mind. Prayer helps us see and seize the God-ordained opportunities that are all around us all the time.
One of the reasons that many people don’t feel an intimacy with God is because they don’t have a daily rhythm with God; they have a weekly rhythm. Would that work with your spouse or your kids? It doesn’t work in God’s family either. We need to establish a daily rhythm in order to have a daily relationship with God. The best way to do that is to begin the day in prayer.
David waited expectantly.
When you go into a meeting with a prayerful posture, it creates a positively charged atmosphere.
You need to identify the times, places, and practices that help you dream big, pray hard, and think long.
“Let God be as original with other people as He is with you.”
of life is meant to be a prayer, just as all of life is meant to be an act of worship.
What if we stopped reading the news and started praying it? What if lunch meetings turned into prayer meetings? What if we converted every problem, every opportunity, into a prayer?
Either way, you can pray with a holy confidence, knowing that with each prayer circle you are one prayer closer. Don’t give up. Like Daniel, the answer is on the way!
Every breakthrough has a genesis and a revelation, literally and figuratively.
Do you realize that the victory has already been won? We’re still waiting for its future tense revelation, but the victory has already been won by means of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is finished.
This isn’t just when God made good on grace; it is when God made good on every promise. Every single one is yes in Christ. Past tense. Present tense. Future tense. The full revelation won’t happen until His return, the return that Daniel prophesied, but the victory has already been won, once and for all, for all time.
It felt like an impossible fight unless God was fighting for us, but if God was fighting for us, then I knew the victory was already won.
if you obey God in the little things, then God knows He can use you to do big things!
And while the Enemy never stops accusing us, our Almighty Ally never stops fighting for us, never gives up on us.
Brian is winning the battle because Christ already won the war.
That defining decision will lead to a daily decision, and together, these defining decisions and daily decisions will lead to a different destiny.
The physical discipline gives you the spiritual discipline to pray through.
Prayer is the way we escape the gravitational pull of the flesh and enter God’s orbit. It’s the way we escape our atmosphere and enter His space. It’s the way we overcome our human limitations and enter the extradimensional realm where all things are possible.
If you don’t set goals, your mind will become stagnant. Goal setting is good stewardship of your right-brain imagination. It’s also great for your prayer life.
Goals are the cause and effect of praying hard. On the front end, prayer is a goal incubator. The more you pray, the more God-sized goals you’ll be inspired to go after. But prayer doesn’t just inspire godly goals, it also ensures that you keep praying hard because it is the only way you’ll accomplish a God-sized goal. Simply put, prayers naturally turn into goals, and goals naturally turn into prayers. Goals give you a prayer target.
They might take a lifetime to achieve, but they are worth waiting for and working for.
If prayer is the genesis of dreams, then goals are the revelation. Goals are well-defined dreams that are measurable.
“Show me your vision, and I’ll show you your future.”
Scripture says that without a vision, people perish. The opposite is true as well. With a vision, people prosper.
Researchers came to this conclusion: imagined movements trigger synaptic changes at the cortical level.
When you dream, your mind forms a mental image that becomes both a picture of and a map to your destiny.
Goals are as unique as we are. They should reflect our unique personality and passions.
If you set goals in the context of prayer, there is a much higher likelihood that your goals will glorify God, and if they don’t glorify God, then they aren’t worth setting in the first place. So start with prayer.
Our motivation for making more is giving more. After all, you make a living by what you get, but you make a life by what you give.
At some point in the process of goal setting, you need to muster the courage to verbalize it. That act of verbalization is an act of faith. When you write down a goal, it holds you accountable. The same goes for a prayer journal. I used to think that written prayers were less spiritual because they were less spontaneous. I now think the opposite. A written prayer requires more faith simply because it’s harder to write it than to say it. But the beautiful thing about written prayers in particular and prayer journals in general is that you have a written record of your prayer.
One of the most important life goals on my list is creating a discipleship covenant for my sons.
When you accomplish a goal, celebrate it. When God answers a prayer, throw a party. We should celebrate with the same intensity with which we pray.
We go around the table, sharing our favorite memories from the past year, and it’s amazing how many of those memories were once goals.
they started out as imaginations. Setting goals is the way you turn imaginations into memories, and once you do, you need to celebrate them.
You need some God-sized goals that qualify as crazy. Here’s why: big goals turn us into big people.
Instead of letting things happen, goals help us make things happen. Instead of living by default, goals help us live by design. Instead of living out of memory, goals help us live out of imagination.
