Your 100 Day Prayer Journey: Day 1 – In the Beginning

The 100-day prayer is simply a way of bringing before God major issues, challenges, concerns, or transitions in our lives. Again, there’s really nothing magic about a hundred days. It’s just what our family settled on as a solid period of concentrated prayer and intercession. It could have been ninety or one-hundred-and-twenty days. The intent is to bring before God the same issues each day for that period. This isn’t something overly involved or impossible to sustain—only a few minutes of prayer every day. It’s striving more for consistency than length of time in prayer.

In their report, “It Takes 66 Days to Form A Habit,” The Telegraph quotes Professor Jane Wardle of University College London, who carried out the study with Dr. Phillippa Lally. “What we found was that it takes 66 days on average for people in our study to acquire a habit… It varied between individuals, but the finding is that if you do something every day in the same situation, it will become an automatic reaction in response to those situational cues, a habit. It is the first time this has been established.”

“As behaviours are repeated in consistent settings they then begin to proceed more efficiently and with less thought as control of the behaviour transfers to cues in the environment that activate an automatic response—a habit.”

This doesn’t mean that if you skip a day or two, everything is going to fall apart. “It suggests that although repetition of a behaviour is required in order to form a habit, some missed opportunities will not derail the process,” they state in the same study.

Other studies suggest it takes an average of about 90 days to form a habit, and 90 days also to kick a habit. The number one hundred provides an extra cushion of time to ensure the habit of prayer has formed.

Jonathan Wells of Advanced Life Skills asks, “What can you accomplish in 100 days?” Apparently, plenty! He suggests six things you’ll need to accomplish your goal in 100 days:

Clarity
Have one or more goals. Try to make sure you take time to prayerfully consider what those goals could be. Then plan how to achieve that goal(s). Keep in mind the search for a new location for the church.

Motivation
Focus on your reason for doing this. Ask yourself how important this is to you or a loved one.

Commitment
Many things that are important to do may just be distractions. Prioritize and focus on your commitment.

Focus
This is what’s going to make or break your ability to achieve your goal.

Accountability
For us, this means we will meet each Sunday morning, whenever possible, for worship, to pray, and encourage each other. Or, check the website for the daily posted devotional.

Action
If possible, write down your daily progress and anything God is doing in your life.

If prayer isn’t a daily habit for you, if you have reached the end of your rope and don’t know how to go forward, are feeling abandoned without a friend, or just need a spiritual power boost, join us on our prayer journey and see how God can transform your life.

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Day 1 – In the Beginning

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

–GENESIS 1:1–2

Sometimes the imagery used in the Bible tells us more than the words themselves. The very first two verses of Genesis are a perfect example of this. As God began to create the world we live in, the Hebrew writer portrayed the Spirit of God as “hovering over” the unformed and unruly mass, much like a mother bird fluttering over her brood. The picture here is the very careful and loving attention God gives to his creation—protecting, shaping, and guiding its development. In other words, there’s no room for chance or randomness. Everything is under his control.

As God’s Spirit hovers, he extracts from the chaos perfect order, boundaries, and purpose. This appears to be the job description of the Holy Spirit from day one up to this very day in our lives. As he continually hovers over all our chaos and disorder— our pain, uncertainty of our future, betrayal, financial challenges, disorder, deceit, and fear—he brings out of them the ordered design that he wants for us and that he intended from the very beginning of the world.

If there is any short summary or basic message we can extract from the Bible’s story of creation, it’s this: God is in charge. He’s in charge of everything, all the time, and forever. We aren’t.

What greater comfort could there be for us? God is with us. Let’s hold on to the promise—Emmanuel, God with us. He will rescue and save us.

TODAY’S PRAYER

Ask the Holy Spirit to sweep into your heart and mind, to bring order, peace, and purpose into your need and request.