365 Days of Biblical Prayer

Come January 1, 2010, I will begin posting a daily entry on this website of the daily devotional I have recently begun writing called "365 Days of Biblical Prayer." By then, if I keep my pace of banging out one meditation per day, I should have a few months worth of the book already completed! Pray that the Lord gives me perseverance, wisdom and revelation in completing this project I believe He has given me. Below is an excerpt from the Introduction to the book. If you would like to have these daily devotions emailed to you daily, send me an email at jasonkelly@ihop.org and put "GIMME DEVOS!" in the subject line. Or just check this blog at you own pace and leisure. :)

One day recently, I decided that I wanted to find all the references to prayer in the Bible so that I could begin to wrap my mind around how prayer has functioned throughout the history of God’s interactions with humanity. So I went to biblegateway.com and typed the word ‘pray’ in the search box. I found it interesting that in the NIV there were exactly 365 different verses that had some variant of the word ‘pray’ in it: one for every day of the year. I have found that oftentimes, searching with a different version will produce a different number of references found, so I went to the NKJV and gave it another try. Again it read: “365 results.” And the idea came to me that I could meditate each day of the year on a different prayer text and that my meditations could be written down to make a helpful daily devotional for anyone who wanted to dive deeper into this vast ocean that is prayer. And hence, this book [or daily blog entry] you now hold in your hands.

Certainly these aren’t the only texts on prayer in the Bible. There are many places where prayer is implied by the use of other words. But for a good place to start, I decided to limit my focus to these 365 verses (I am mostly following the NIV listings). As you read each of the daily devotions, I encourage you to familiarize yourself with the story or context from which the verse comes from. Also, I’ve included quite a few cross references in each meditation. I encourage you to look those up as you come across them, to see what connections the Holy Spirit begins making for you. I hope you find helpful and encouraging these musings on what the Bible has to say about prayer. Moreover, I pray that as you gaze at this subject, you would find the spirit of prayer coming upon you (Zechariah 12:10), and that the God who has seemed distant or conceptual would come close and share with you the secrets of His heart, and that you would begin entering deeper into the most powerful calling any human being can ever enter into: to encounter God in intimate communion and to partner with Him in shaping history through prayer.