Prayer for a Path Forward

Are you a morning person?

Honestly, mornings have never been my jam. I would rather stay up until 2:00 AM than get up before seven. Although marrying a morning person did improve my bearish behavior, it wasn’t until I picked up a pattern in Scripture that I left my deviant ways behind.

Somewhere around two kids and a dog, I found myself spent. As a young mom trying to finish school while working part-time, I was exhausted. Long days followed late nights. That’s when I realized something was missing. It dawned on me the Bible never records Jesus staying up late working on a project, like me, too bleary-eyed to pray in the morning. I supposed Jesus was a morning person. Still, the blaring absence communicated there might be something to starting the day in prayer instead of downcast despondence. So, I set about mending my night-owlish ways to do just that.

Lessons Learned on the Path Forward

Spending focused time in prayer is where you and I grow by God’s grace. Those moments are more than giving voice to what concerns us. They are the building blocks of relationships. When Jesus relates his analogy of the vine to the branches, he makes clear there is no fruit found on branches that don’t stay connected to the vine. The point is to live in the vine. It is a picture of a close relationship between God, the vinedresser, and the followers of Christ developed by spending time together.

Chances are, the hours in your days and nights are consumed. There is nothing left by the time your head hits the pillow. I get it. I too have tried to squeeze twenty-seven hours into my allotted twenty-four. And it’s not making me more like Jesus. I need a better path forward. Likely, you do, too.

Let me experience your faithful love in the morning, for I trust in you. Reveal to me the way I should go because I appeal to you. Psalm 143:8

The Psalmist reminds us that when we begin praying in the morning to grow in relationship with God, we can know his faithful love by experience.

When you and I make meeting with God a top priority, before we are spent and exhausted, we reap benefits. Those first moments of the day allow us to pour out our hearts, leave our concerns, and request guidance in knowing which way to go. As we listen, we begin to experience more of God. I don’t understand how it works, but this approach is the one the Psalmist took, Jesus lived, and the way he paved four to live a fruitful life.

The Psalmist is like us in that he wants this reality in his own life – to experience more of God and for direction, so he asks for it.

Prayer for a Path Forward

Dear Lord,

Today I pray for my fellow night-owl. I pray for the one burning her candle down to the nub, still breathless, never finding time to be alone with You. Or if she does, it’s at random times when she thinks of it. Show her a path forward. Give her a solution for making meeting with you her priority. Draw near so that she will know by experience just how faithful is your love for her. Lead her and direct her ways. Reveal yourself to her in a way she can recognize and understand it comes from a God who is crazy about her.

For all of this I ask in the Name of Jesus, Amen.

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