Weekly Guide
At the beginning of most weeks, I share a short prayer guide, offering words and practices that will help you see, hear, and experience more of God in your daily life. I’d love for you to join us.
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This week, when you feel the sting of delay or the ache of unmet expectations, when you’re tempted to cut down the tree, remind yourself that the Vinedresser is still at work. He’s still digging, still tending, still waiting.
This week, if you feel the tug of the world’s systems pulling at your heart, if you sense the ache of emptiness from chasing what will never fill you, stop. Humble yourself. Draw near. Let God fill you with His grace, His presence, His love.
This week, when you wake up, before you reach for your phone or dive into your day, pause. Take a breath. Sit with God. Let His righteousness cover you. Let His Spirit settle you. Let His likeness fill you and clarify how you see the day.
When we grow impatient, God shows mercy. When we’re ready to give up, God asks for time. He doesn’t rush the process. He knows that sometimes it takes digging up the soil of our hearts, working in the mess and manure, to bring forth the fruit of life.
Have you ever thought it strange that Jesus tells us not to waste words because our Father in heaven knows what we need before we ask (Matt. 6:7–8), but then a chapter later suggests we should ask, seek, and knock through prayer (Matt. 7:7)?
Get playful with it. Ask God’s Spirit to show you joy in the ordinary. Let God take the pressure off. Because in your Father’s playground, you’re free to be a child again—curious, open, and fully alive.
Humility is not so much a place we arrive at but something we pursue. Pursuing a lowliness that resembles Jesus takes intentionality.
We are living in answered prayers, and I believe God is accelerating something beautiful in the earth today. Keep praying, my friend, for it is only through prayer that we come to see the miracle we’re living in and participate in the miracles to come.
Sin and shame, doubt and despair, loss and loneliness, they will all bow a knee to the Eternal One, for their power, though strong, is inevitably temporal. They cannot defeat His Life.
I can promise you, God does not despise you, He has not turned his back on you. The darkness is part of this week, but it has no place in Easter’s finale. Your moment of disorientation will become a monument to God’s grace and faithfulness. But you must first offer your cry to Him.
The war has already been won, but the battle for our hearts and minds is ongoing. The enemy wants us distracted, discouraged, and disconnected from God. But prayer realigns us with truth, refocuses our eyes on Jesus, and reminds us who holds the victory.
This week, when you lose sight of the miracle in your everyday comings and goings, when you feel overwhelmed by cares and challenges, when life feels like nothing more than a bunch of boxes to check, I want you to stop, close your eyes, take a deep breath, and pray…
Have you ever thought it strange that Jesus tells us not to waste words because our Father in heaven knows what we need before we ask (Matt. 6:7–8), but then a chapter later suggests we should ask, seek, and knock through prayer (Matt. 7:7)?
Did you catch the promise couched in the prayer? While trials and temptation are inevitable, so is our victory. Whether it be now or then, every problem has an end date. Every pain will be swallowed up in joy. Every broken part of us will be healed and restored.
When you pray this week, begin by meditating on God’s holiness, His love, His tenderness, His faithfulness. Think of this as a holy inhale—you’re breathing in God’s Life and breathing out the temptation to make yourself (or your concerns) god over your life. (And please read Romans 8:5–8, specifically in The Message.)
You’ll notice the prayer begins by placing our attention on God, the One who inhabits the heavens, the One who upholds all things by the word of His power. Once we’re settled in His tender holiness and the surety of His will, we then move into our requests, our fears, our trials, our pains. They all have a place in our prayers, and I encourage you to make each line specific to you, the people in your world, the cares of your day, and trials in your way.
I want to challenge you to spend some time this week praying through Luke 15. As you read about the sheep, the coins, the sons, place yourself in these stories. You’ll see that Jesus tells of a costly joy—one that comes with forgiveness and repentance, seeking and finding, tears and confusion. A joy that, in this broken world, can feel easy to lose . . . yet something inside us knows it’s always worth finding again.
In this Christmas season, let’s be those who live with active patience, lifting our eyes and steadying our hearts so we can be faithful with our hands. Through grace we can see every mundane responsibility, such as the upkeep of a stable, as meaningful to the purposes of God.
Fresh or familiar pain is never enjoyable, but we mustn’t forget that pain is good as long as it’s necessary. It locates what is hurt so it can be healed. Don’t deny the pain but do defy it through your daily surrender.
What is God asking you to acknowledge, to bless, to break? Have you cursed what’s in your hands rather than blessing it and offering it to God?
Sin does its best work in the dark. It fractures, separates, distorts, dealing in deception and delusion. Sin is powerful but it doesn’t stand a chance against the light. When brought into the light, its holes are exposed, and those holes become portals, if you will, for us to receive God’s redemptive holiness, a wholeness only made possible by grace. Within the light, even sin must bow its knee, surrendering to God’s plans to redeem, restore, and transform.
Sin does its best work in the dark. It fractures, separates, distorts, dealing in deception and delusion. Sin is powerful but it doesn’t stand a chance against the light. When brought into the light, its holes are exposed, and those holes become portals, if you will, for us to receive God’s redemptive holiness, a wholeness only made possible by grace. Within the light, even sin must bow its knee, surrendering to God’s plans to redeem, restore, and transform.
Have you ever noticed that thanksgiving has a buoyancy to it? When you’re around people who practice costly gratitude, life feels lighter, even when it’s heavy.
There is hope, though. According to the proverb, while anxiety might weigh us down, just a single good word can reverse its effects, offering us courage in exchange for despair.
There is hope, though. According to the proverb, while anxiety might weigh us down, just a single good word can reverse its effects, offering us courage in exchange for despair.
There’s a moment in Psalm 5 where David tells us to “be agitated (angry), and do not sin; ponder in your own hearts . . . and be silent.” As a poet and lyricist, David isn’t suggesting we abandon messy words but he knows a pondering posture eventually leads to powerful words of praise.
I want to challenge you this week to feed on God’s faithfulness. The Hebrew word for “feed” could also be translated graze or drive to pasture, so ask Jesus to shepherd you into the fields of His faithfulness. Ask for eyes to see and receive what you haven’t known before. Ask for the strength to dwell and enjoy.
I know I’m asking you to do scary and sacrificial work. But I promise the Spirit will meet you in those tender places. He is gracious, patient, faithful, and He longs for us to know as we are known.
We’re in the middle of a series on Rest, and I was asked to teach on Psalm 116, with an emphasis on prayer. God gave me a four-part framework that, from what I hear, is already helping people move through the tensions that come with prayer, hope, death, and disappointment.
It’s true that the good we are seeking doesn’t often come on our timetable, but Scripture tells us we can believe anything is possible because Jesus’s resurrection power brings certainty, a certainty that overcomes every fear, anxiety, and pain, including death.
It took me a while to realize I was missing Paul’s big point. I wanted the peace—don’t we all!— but I didn’t want to actually release my cares, worries, or anxieties to God. Letting go felt risky and foolish. I wanted to hedge my bets.
When you feel anxious or ill-equipped this week, pull out the paper and pray through these words, receiving them as your own. Take a few deep breaths as you ask the One who searches and knows all things to guide you forward.
Unforgiveness keeps us from knowing what to pray, and it causes our relationship with God to devolve into bitterness and disappointment. But as we exhale forgiveness, a spaciousness is formed in us, and we find the capacity to move through conflicts and concerns.
Take a quick inventory of your experience with people who “know everything,” the ones who make it their mission to prove how right they are and how wrong everyone else is. They are some of the most unloving and divisive people, right? Have you been that person before? (I know I have.)
We cannot give what we do not have, so I promise you, if you rest in His sufficiency, God will teach you His healing sound.
As we move into Easter, I want to challenge you to be real with God. Don’t just skip ahead to what happens on Sunday. If you feel abandoned by Him, pray into Jesus’s journey to the Cross. Of course, be humble before your God but for heaven’s sake be honest. He already knows your thoughts and can handle your words. Never forget that Jesus’s holiness creates space for your humanity.
Prayer is the pathway into and through the void. It’s also our source of power and promise, calming our minds and hearts, releasing us from anxiety’s grip. The void is dark and mysterious, for it represents every undiscovered part of us, but prayer is the light that reveals what’s always been true, truth that remains hidden until we are ready to receive it as a gift.
When it comes to prayer, are you quick to hear and slow to speak? Do you just fire off a bunch of words in God’s direction and move onto whatever’s next? I know I have a bend toward such prayers. That’s why I want to remind us today that prayer is less about performance—i.e., getting the words right—and more about a surrendered awareness that only comes with a listening posture.
As we lay down our self-sufficiency, taking our focus off ourselves, we become more grounded in God’s Omni-Nature, finding eyes to see that the whole earth is full of His glory (and that even includes us, His “very good” work). The holiness of God invites us to see Him in the wholeness of creation, for the Eternal One is indeed the Source of all goodness, truth, and beauty.
Are there areas in your life where you feel held back and need a breakthrough, a sudden advance beyond or through an obstacle?
God doesn’t need perfect words but he does need you to participate. Our imperfect prayers and cries will, in the most surprising of ways, open us up to the miraculous work that He’s doing in us.
I wanted to share Robert’s quote on turning your Bible into prayer. If you don’t already, try considering your time in Scripture as a moment of private prayer. God speaks through Scripture, and he loves it when we use Scripture to speak to him. If you’re looking for a good place to start, visit the Psalms. They’ve been spoken and sung to God for thousands of years. Psalm 142 is currently a personal favorite of mine.
Only God knows what 2024 holds for us, but he’s not trying to keep us in the dark. Whatever God hides from us, he ultimately hides for us, preparing us to know the Truth and receive it as our own. And the greatest truth of all is the promise of Immanuel—God for us, God with us, and God within us. A promise that becomes more and more real as we learn to embrace prayer as a way of life.
We don’t have to carry the weight of what’s to come, and we don’t need all the answers. What we need is to be led by the One who is the Answer to whatever may come.
In this Christmas season, let’s be those who live with active patience, lifting our eyes and steadying our hearts so we can be faithful with our hands. Through grace we can see every mundane responsibility, such as the upkeep of a stable, as meaningful to the purposes of God.
Have you viewed thankfulness as just a good idea instead of an act of warring worship? There is an oppressive spirit that seeks to blind us in our brokenness, blocking the pathway of wholeness and redemption. But Scripture tells us that expressing “unreasonable” thanksgiving is, in fact, the most reasonable thing we can do. This week, let’s be those who open our mouths and lift our hands. As we do, any garment of heaviness will become lighter in the light of Ultimate Truth (Isaiah 61:3).
You may be broken because of them, but they are blinded by their bondage. There’s a reason, after all, why Jesus taught us to pray, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” The one who gave his life for them (and us) promises that “love” and “prayer” can help set them free, delivering them (and us) from their terror.
Israel and the Middle East need our prayers. For the sake of the nations, let’s be people who embrace personal forgiveness so we can be conduits for the kingdom, stakeholders in God’s sovereign rule. We don’t need more empty words. We need heaven’s miraculous power. And Jesus tells us that we participate in God’s power, a power that joins heaven and earth, when we yield to the holy and transforming work of forgiveness.
When was the last time you just sat with God in silence? No words. No distractions. No noise. If we’re honest, we’ll admit that there are silent moments throughout our day, but we yield to the pressure and fill them with noise. Silence is a regular companion whose presence is often ignored. This week, ask the Spirit to show you such moments. It may feel awkward and unfamiliar at first but don’t shrink back. I promise that God will eventually meet you there.
Perhaps you’re struggling to see the light. Maybe all you see is failure, disappointment, and purposelessness. It’s in these moments that we’re called to do the brave work of repentance…
The disciples’ response to Jesus’s words was “increase our faith” (v. 5). This way of living seemed too great for them, and they realized that they needed faith beyond what they had known. Let’s be the ones who pray “increase our faith” this week, especially when searching to understand the difficulties within and without.
The Invitation
At the beginning of most weeks, I share a short prayer guide, offering words and practices that will help you see, hear, and experience more of God in your daily life. I’d love for you to join us.
When you sign up, I’ll send you the first 2 chapters of the Words with God book as a gift.
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Addison Bevere is the COO of Messenger International, a ministry founded by John and Lisa Bevere in 1990 that exists to develop uncompromising followers of Christ who transform our world. Messenger is dedicated to providing people with access to life-transforming messages regardless of their location, language, or financial position.
Husband, father, author, poet, speaker & follower of Christ
Husband, father, author, poet, speaker & follower of Christ