3 Part Prayer Plan for the Unavoidable Crisis of Life

Therefore let all the faithful pray to you

while you may be found;

surely the rising of the mighty waters

will not reach them. Psalm 32:6

This is one of my favorite verses from one of my favorite chapters of the Bible. It is so full of truth of the realities of life. Here are some truths to help you when that next crisis of life hits you.

Build the path of prayer when you are not in crisis.

The author is reminding us it might be harder to find God in the midst of a crisis so make a habit of prayer when things are going well. As much as I would like it otherwise difficulty will come in life, but I can prepare ahead of time by praying before I get there.

Call out to God the best that you know how in the midst of your crisis.

It may feel hard to find God in the midst of your crisis. When the storm is crashing down and you feel like you are sinking the only prayer you might be able to pray will be like Peter when he was sinking, “Lord, save me!” It may be hard but reach out as best you can on the path that you built before.

Give yourself grace when the storm comes.

As this passage reminds us when storms come it can be hard to even have the strength to reach out. But the beauty is that in those moments we can simply rest in God. The very next verse reminds us that He is our hiding place. In the hiding place you don’t have to do anything but stay still and let the hiding place protect you from the danger outside. God is able to protect you as you rest in Him!

Sometimes we need to cut back on some spiritual habits

This may be one of the strangest posts you read from “the prayer guy.” I wrote a book called Enjoying Prayer and one of the main points was to give people ideas so they could create habits in their prayer life. Well let me step back a step and say that maybe it is time to cut some of them out.

Before you move on and think I have lost my way, hear me out. Why do we have spiritual habits, or disciplines, to start with? What is the goal of our prayer, solitude, fasting etc?

Let me first remind you of what is not the goal. The goal is not to master the habits. To quote from one of the legends of today in teaching on this subject, Richard Foster, “We are not supposed to master something that is supposed to master us.” He also said, “We want excellence, but it is not like getting an ‘A’ in solitude. Excellence is in the pursuit.”

We are not supposed to master something that is supposed to master us.-Richard Foster

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If mastery is not the goal then what is the goal of these activities and habits? The goal is as a way that God’s grace comes in our life to build our friendship with Jesus. Prayer is to build our conversation with God. Solitude slows us down enough to be aware of God and so on. These things are merely a method for us to encounter God’s grace, power and love.

I am warned by a story of the Israelites in the wilderness. God told them to build a snake that they could look at in order to experience God healing. Later in their history they needed to destroy this because they had begun worshiping it. The means and method to worship God had become the focus of their worship instead. (2 Kings 18:4)

That is why it is important from time to time to evaluate the specifics of our spiritual habits. To take from Mark Batterson our routines can become ruts that keep us from experiencing God. To paraphrase John Ortberg in his book Soul Keeping, we need to ask ourselves the question, “Is this practice still bringing grace into my life?”

An example from my life will help. In Enjoying Prayer, I share about my habit of writing down things that I am thankful for from God. The purpose was to remind my heart of all the good things that God has given to me. Now that habit has become more seasonal in my life. There are periods of time when God will take me back to the habit. I also now use an online tool on my phone instead of paper.

Let me encourage you to take a moment to evaluate your habits that you started with the purpose to know God and determine if now they are getting in the way of your journey closer to Jesus or maybe just need to be changed. Some you may even realize how much they are still helping you and you need to add more of it to your life. Let’s just make sure that our pursuit is Jesus.

I was blown away by how much I could miss! What are you missing?

My wife Jen and I are fans of a good “who done it” type mystery. There is something fun about trying to stay one step ahead of the detectives in the book or tv show. I heard once that a good mystery gives you enough clues that you can figure it out on your own even if they don’t tell you. That allows us to stay in the hunt as we go on the journey with the investigator.

In a mystery it is good to keep the characters straight. This is good for me because I do really well with faces. I am learning to get better with names but I can see a face and remember it years later. My brother in law calls it “a super facial recognizer.” I am not sure if that is a thing but him and I can have some fun with our abilities.

So Jen and I were watching one of these shows and I thought I was doing rather well. I may not be Sherlock Holmes, but I felt like I was holding my own. Then in the last five minutes they revealed some clues that were in plain sight all along. These clues were not small things but I was blown away that I had missed them along.

After we were done watching I was reflecting on how, no matter how much we try, we can miss the obvious. Our brains are limited. Try as we might we don’t always catch all of the information; information that we sometimes need. That is fine when we are enjoying a detective quest but it can have much more serious consequences in our everyday life.

This reminded me of the importance of trust and obedience of God. He does have all of the information. The famous verses are true: Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight. (Proverbs 3:5-6 bold mine). If we are dependent on our own ability to figure things out our limits can leave us in a shaky position. But the Psalmist says, “Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be shaken but endures forever. (Ps. 125:1) When we trust in God’s direction we are secure like standing on a mountain.

Dependence on our own ability to figure things out our limits can leave us in a shaky position.

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Now I am not suggesting that we do not use our brains. Part of Jesus’ command to us is to love the Lord with our mind. I have embraced the nerd within. Study and learning are an important part of the journey of our love relationship with God. I am a passionate life long learner. I would love to see more Christians pushing themselves in many areas of study. But the importance of learning only highlights, all the more, the importance of trust and radical obedience to the God who knows more than we will ever learn. Where do you need to trust and obey today?