Over the past year, I’ve felt an increasing desire to incorporate more prayer time into my day. There’s something cathartic about quiet prayer time, and I often feel the benefit almost immediately. The challenge with finding these time blocks for increased prayer is that it cannot be rushed. Prayer, like any conversation, requires a set amount of time and there’s no rushing this process.

My bookshelf is full of books that I want to read. In fact, I have a list of books that makes up my reading queue and as of right now there are over 20 titles on that list. The same can be said for my prayer life. There are so many devotionals, so many books for spiritual readings, and so many ways to pray. These options can make a prayer habit challenging because I want to explore multiple forms of prayer each day.

There are two main challenges to daily prayer: time and cycle. Interestingly, these two challenges are the same that we face any time that we want to incorporate a good habit into our lives. Time is simple: we have X number of hours that we’re awake during the day. What are we going to give up in order to use its time for prayer? Cycle is the recognition that there will be times of great growth, and times of isolation. How will we take advantage of the growth in order to power through the spiritual winters?

This post really is nothing new. In fact, I didn’t intend for it to be new, groundbreaking material. Instead, it’s a reminder for me personally, and perhaps for you, that I need to be serious about integrating prayer into my day, and I need to be bold enough to invite my family to join me. It’s easy to intellectually grasp that daily prayer will improve my life, I just need to put it into action.