Rise and Shine!, by Daniel Montgomery

All right, it’s 5am. Who rose early? (spoiler alert: I actually scheduled this last night. I’ll see you a lot later.) For those of you who don’t know, I issued a challenge to Sojourners (and now to all you blogospheroids) to take the challenge to seek God’s face by developing the intentional practice of rising early (and by that I mean early enough to start your day seeking the Lord rather than frantically seeking your car keys as you bolt out the door). It’s definitely a discipline, but a worthy one with a long and rich history of tradition in the church among men and women who thirsted for regular time with their God.

Just a quick recap, the challenge breaks down into seven steps – and the first step isn’t even ‘Set your alarm clock one hour earlier’. This challenge isn’t about losing sleep and suffering for Jesus, this challenge is about taking your day captive and making intentional decisions to seek the Lord and the required preparations to do so.

The steps are:

1) Go to bed – take a good look at your nightly routines and decide if that extra half hour of Facebook is really necessary and get in the bed. Consider the Hebrew calendar: their day begins in the evening, in how they prepare for the coming morning. So, Go to bed.

2) Get up – pretty simple. Get out of bed.

3) Get awake – whatever it takes: coffee, shower, push-ups. Whatever.

4) Find a quiet spot – the TV will not be in your quiet spot. Neither will your computer or phone. Trust me on this one.

5) Get comfortable – no need to pray ‘til it hurts (you won’t earn any points anyway), find a place where you aren’t distracted.

6) Get going – simply pray and/or read the word. Start small, with achievable goals and let it grow organically.

7) Keep going – don’t give up. Don’t rest on yesterday’s seeking. Seek God every day.

I got these steps from a book: A Praying Life by Paul E. Miller. This book comes highly recommended from pastors like Tim Keller in New York, Scotty Smith and Louisville’s own Bob Russell. Miller’s book would be a fantastic companion for you as you practice your own connecting with God in a distracting world c (we’ll have a number of copies at our book table next Sunday). I’ll leave you with a taste and the encouragement to get up and seek God.

Come overwhelmed with life. Come with a wandering mind. Come messy.

Don’t be embarrassed by how needy your heart is and how much it needs to cry out for grace. Just start praying.

It didn’t take long to realize that I did by best parenting by prayer. I began to speak less to the kids and more to God. It was actually quite relaxing.

You don’t need self-discipline to pray continuously; you just need to be poor in spirit.

Anxiety is unable to relax in the face of chaos; continuous prayer clings to the Father in the face of chaos.

Asking in Jesus’ name isn’t another thing I have to get right so my prayers are perfect. It is one more gift of God because my prayers are so imperfect.

We shy away from prayers that invite God to rule our lives. They make us vulnerable.

When you persist in a spiritual vacuum, when you hang in there during ambiguity, you get to know God.