BIG IDEA |

"The shape of your prayer life is determined by the size of your dependence."

The Real Reason We Don't Pray

Our failure to pray is fraught with excuses. See if you can find yourself in one of these five reasons we fail to pray:

Big Idea

"Nothing improves preaching like constant prayer, effective preparation, and frequent reps. "

Improving your preaching gift is like dieting for weight loss - progress develops over time and doesn't happen overnight. It's hard work. Slowly, week after week and sermon after sermon, you begin to learn a few things. Eventually, they say, you find your voice (I'm still working on this).

Preachers face a lot of pressure these days. We live in a day and age marked by easy access to an amazing caliber of preaching. This means the bar is set extraordinarily high for the average preacher. It's intimidating to know that your audience podcasts pastors like Mark Driscoll, Andy Stanley, James MacDonald, Steven Furtick, Matt Chandler, and John Piper throughout the week and then shows up to hear you on Sunday.

Pastors should be working hard to preach the best sermons possible, but the best sermon is only as good as the audience listening. Preaching is a two-way street. The preacher is responsible for preaching well, and the audience is responsible for listening well.

Listening is a lost art in our culture, so how should we listen to a sermon?

Leaders have a God-given desire to grow. Within the heart of every leader lies a perpetual dissatisfaction for what is, and a desire for what could and should be. This includes the leader's own leadership ability. Every good leader I know desires to be a better leader than they currently are.

Here are four ways to grow your leadership:

One of my goals for this year has been to pursue growth in my prayer life. To do so, I have been reading, studying, and most importantly, praying. By God's grace I am seeing growth and have found these three things to be crucial to the consistent increase of fervent prayer.

One of the great mistakes a Christian can make in his, or her life is to overcomplicate prayer. Prayer is not complicated. Prayer is difficult for most of us, sure, but it's not complicated. At the root of all our petitioning of God in prayer is really the same prayer: