Some Growth is still Growth
Our theme for the month of July is “Grow.” One of the commitments I’ve made this summer is to try to grow in my prayer life. I already have an established time of personal prayer in the mornings, and I often pause and pray throughout the day for various reasons, but I wanted to add a more focused time of prayer for our church. I thought I’d start small, so I added a bullet point to my daily to-do list to pray for 15 minutes in the afternoon. During that time I planned to pray specifically for the people of Valley View, both the established members and guests.
Want to guess how often I’ve kept that prayer time since putting it on the list? This is embarrassing to admit, but NOT ONE TIME did I actually keep that prayer time. 15 minutes? I couldn’t find another 15 minutes, even once, over the last month? And you call yourself a pastor….
Ask the Hard Questions
What stalled my growth over the last month? Or, as Andrew addressed Sunday, what were the growth killers in my life? As I thought about this, a couple of things came to mind. First, Jesus still loves me. Yes, I failed in this new area of growth, but Jesus still loves me. I’m still His child. Self-loathing won’t help growth and certainly won’t increase a desire to pray. Psalm 62:1 says, “For God alone my soul waits in silence, from Him comes my salvation.” We must turn to God in the midst of any failures, not to self-loathing, or self-effort, or even avoidance and anger.
Second, I had to ask “why” and try to do an honest assessment of my failure. You may recall when we did the series on Habits to start the year, based partly on the book Atomic Habits, one of the keys to starting a new habit was to make it so small that you couldn’t not start it. In my pride, it seems ridiculous to think I couldn’t find 15 minutes a day to pray, but I didn’t, so I have to admit that 15 minutes was too big of a commitment to get started. So what now? 10 minutes? 7? 2? I’ll start with 10 and see if that helps. But if not, then I’ll go lower. The key is to get started with the habit, even if the starting point seems too small to be worth it. Remember that some growth is still growth.
I also went back to my to-do list and looked for other clues. There I realized I had added TWO other new things, neither of which were going well either. It usually doesn’t work to start more than one new habit at a time. So I’ve crossed those other two things off the list (one was a second afternoon prayer time) in order to focus on just one new thing in July.
How is God calling you to grow in July? Have you had any success with memorizing our verses for July (Romans 5:1-5)? These are some tremendous verses that will also prepare our hearts for our next sermon series in 1 Peter starting in August. Remember that you can simply listen to the Scripture memory song for these verses.
Whatever you feel He is calling you to do, find a way to simply get started. It’s important that we keep growing, because as each of us grows closer to Christ, Valley View becomes a stronger church, better equipped to reach the South End for Christ!
Now I think it’s time I stop writing and pray for 10 minutes.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash