• Permit me to ask: What if the forces that sustain you, day-in-day-out, are not the direct result of faith in Jesus Christ? In other words, what if we are similar to the people (2 Tim 2:5) Paul tells Timothy to avoid, “having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power”? Is it the power and grace of God that sustain you? Or are you sustained by other forces: anger over that battle you’re always fighting in your head, a need to find favor with a certain person, fear of disappointing some other person, excitement over the next big household purchase or event, the pride that drives you to function at a high level, the urge to maintain control over your home. All these can drive people, and drive them hard.
• If the way you engage daily life is by depending on God himself and “struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me” (Col 1:29), then you will find yourself in frequent prayer. Prayer is the conduit for the energy that he works in you. If prayer is not your reflex, then you are sustained by other forces, and are likely much closer to that person who has merely “the appearance of godliness” but denies its power. So even though you would never verbally deny the power of God, your actions describe a different belief system.
• For all of us there is the moment when, faced with unsurmountable difficulties, we fall on our faces before God. Yet this is how Paul envisions the entirety of the Christian life. “Pray without ceasing” he says — and he means it. Jesus said, “watch, therefore, and pray always.” The first Gentile to be baptized by Peter, the centurion Cornelius, was a man who “prayed to God continually” or, transliterated, “begged of God in all things” (Acts 10:2).
• Prayer is dependence on, and trust in, the power of God. Something is fueling the fire in you. What is it?