Changed: CCV StudentsSample

TEXT MESSAGE PRAYERS

If you’ve been around church for any length of time, you’ve probably heard somebody pray an intimidating prayer. You know the kind...it seems to go on for nine minutes, they’re using all sorts of confusing spiritual words like “sanctify” or “sovereign,” they pause between every third word to say “Lord” (as if they’re worried God will forget they’re talking to Him). If you are listening to that and just figuring out faith and how to have a relationship with God, it’s common to think “if that’s how God expects us to pray, I don’t think I’m ever going to be able to talk to Him.”

Believe me, I’ve been there, and I have good news for you…there is no need whatsoever to pray like that. I mean, if that’s how the person praying truly connects with God, then more power to them. But God does not expect those elaborate, long, big-word-filled prayers. Now, there are a couple different ways to pray that are beneficial for every Christ follower, but today I want us to focus on the most important and easiest to implement…I call it “the text message prayer.” 

If you take your phone and look at the text thread between you and your best friend, I bet you'll see that you guys send dozens – maybe hundreds of texts back and forth each day. They’re not terribly long, they’re about all sorts of topics, but you each just fire off those texts whenever you think about it, when something happens, when you have a question, or for pretty much any reason. You probably don’t even think about it, you just pick up the phone and say whatever is on your mind. Well, we can pray to God the same exact way. 

As you’re going through your day, whenever you think of it, just throw out a quick one-liner prayer to God. You can do it silently in your head (God will still hear you…and He probably doesn’t want the people in your class thinking you’re crazy and talking to yourself). But just simple little prayers: “God, thanks for helping me with that test.” “God, I’m scared…please help!” “God, that cloud looks just like a T-Rex riding a motorcycle…thanks for being so creative.” It can be about anything, but just keep talking to God whenever you think about it. If you will develop that habit, you’ll find yourself talking to God all day, and it will absolutely change your life. So, begin practicing throwing out “text message prayers” to God today, and see what happens.