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Jesus is our life, and prayer is one of the indispensable ways that we remain connected to the wholeness of his life. May it be said of us in 2023 that our life is full of “often” getting away to spend time in prayer with him.

Developing and maintaining the habit of personal devotion and prayer is absolutely necessary to abiding in Jesus. It is not the only habit that is needed. Weekly worship on the Sabbath with the church family is vital to abiding in the Lord also, along with other personal and corporate spiritual habits.

The habit itself does not insure that we will abide in Jesus. We can go through the motions.

We can mistakenly replace the discipline of the habit for the relationship. However, that does not mean that we can forsake the habit either.

How do we navigate between the two extremes in this area of the habit of prayer? Let me suggest an old Christian tradition called “The Psalms of the Day”. The Psalms of the Day are determined by the date. As I write this, the first psalm of the day is Psalm 19 because it is the 19^th of January. In addition to the psalm that corresponds to the date, there are 4 more psalms that are separated by intervals of 30. For example, add 30 to 19, and you get 49. Add 30 to 49, and you get 79. Keep on adding and the remaining two are 109 and 139. So then the Psalms of the Day for January 19^th are Psalm 19, 49, 79, 109, and 139.

This is what you do. Pick one psalm of the day (or more), read the psalm, and then pray through the psalm according to the words and themes it presents. In this way, the different focus of each psalm helps to guide you in ways that you might not have done on your own.

This will allow you to break out of the prayer ruts which keep you praying the same things and can tend to work against both the habit and the heart of prayer.

So, try out the psalms of the day, and let me know how the Lord works in your heart.