Weekly Devotions for 3/23/2021

March 23 – God Renews

During Lent, our weekly e-devotion will be taken from the “God Acts” devotional booklet. Please follow along in the booklet for a new devotion each day.

Psalm 51:10-11

Create in me a clean heart, O God,
    and put a new and rightspirit within me.
Do not cast me away from your presence,
    and do not take your holy spirit from me.

Do you expect anything to happen when you pray? Many people do not. They see prayer as something that we piously do, but do not think much about it or expect much from it. Other people expect God to do something in response to their prayers. The thinking goes that if we pray for something hard enough, then God is obligated to do what it is that we are asking for. If what we are asking for does not happen, it must mean that we did not pray hard enough. The issue with both of these approaches is that the emphasis is still on our actions rather than God’s action. If we understand prayer primarily as an act of trust in God, a different expectation might emerge. By fully trusting in God, we can expect that what is likely to change is us. By recognizing that God is the center of our lives, we are then freed to move and change. Through our prayer, we can expect that God will change our perspective and call us forth in love toward the world. We can reliably expect that through our fervent prayer God will change and renew us, each and every time.

To pray is to change. Prayer is the central avenue God uses to transform us. If we are unwilling to change, we will abandon prayer as a noticeable characteristic of our lives. – Richard Foster