Daily Effective Prayer

I’ll tell you where this hit me. Not in a quiet retreat with soft music and a leather journal. It was in my office, before the sun really decided to show up. My phone was buzzing with notifications from all my ministry social profiles. I was already behind. And I could feel that familiar pressure in my chest, like life was leaning on me a little too hard. I remember thinking, I should pray. And then the next thought came right behind it, louder than it should’ve been. Who am I to pray with authority? I’m tired. I’m distracted. I snapped at somebody yesterday. I’m not exactly glowing with holiness right now. That right there is where a lot of us live. We love God. We believe. But when it comes to prayer , we slide into this timid mode, like we’re leaving a voicemail for heaven and hoping nobody notices we called. So let’s talk about it like adults who actually have real lives. How do you pray with authority when you feel unqualified, inconsistent, and honestly a little messy? What ...

I didn’t plan on writing this. You see, a few years ago I planned on having a “good” morning, you know? Coffee hot. Bible open. A little quiet before the kids started arguing about cereal like it’s a courtroom case. But instead I’m sitting at the kitchen table, one sock on, one sock missing, and my daily effective prayer feels like it’s bouncing off the cabinets and dropping right back into my lap. You ever have that moment where you’re not even mad at God, you’re not doubting, you’re not in some dramatic crisis, you’re just… blank. Like your heart is online but the screen is frozen. And the worst part is how normal it looks from the outside. You still show up. You still pray . You still say the right things. You still know the verses. You still try to smile at people at church. But inside, it’s like someone turned the volume down and forgot to tell you why. That numb season cost me more than I realized. Not because God left. Because I started doing prayer like maintenance instead o...

I remember sitting in my truck one evening after work, just trying to get myself together before heading into the house. I had prayed every day, worked hard, led others in prayer, but still felt spiritually dry. There was this nagging feeling that I was missing something—like I was checking off boxes instead of genuinely connecting with God. I thought about the mistakes I made, and to be honest, I wasn’t sure where I went wrong. Prayer was supposed to be life-giving, not draining, right? But here I was—feeling disconnected despite my best efforts. It hit me that maybe I had been making prayer harder than it needed to be. What if I was missing some foundational things? The more I thought about it, the more I realized that some of my habits weren’t actually helping my relationship with God, and they were costing me more than I understood at the time. Let me tell you about the 5 prayer mistakes that I made and how they held me back. Mistake #1: I Thought Prayer Had to Be Long and Elabor...

I still remember the morning it finally hit me. I was standing in my office, running through my usual prayer list in my head, when I realized I sounded like a customer service email. Polite. Structured. Safe. And completely disconnected. I paused mid-sentence and laughed out loud. Not because it was funny, but because it was painfully obvious. I wasn’t praying anymore. I was managing God. Checking boxes. Hitting spiritual quotas. And then wondering why nothing seemed to move. That moment was uncomfortable, but it was also freeing. Because once I stopped asking, “What should I add to my prayer life?” and started asking, “What do I need to stop doing?” everything changed. Why We Build Checklists Instead of Relationships Most of us don’t mean to turn prayer into a checklist. It usually starts with good intentions. We want to be consistent. We want to be disciplined. We want to do it right. But somewhere along the way, prayer becomes something we complete instead of something we enter ....