21 Days of Prayer to Share Your Heart with God

I guess you could say our marriage was built on Friday night sushi nights. That was our regular date night (until kids came along). We were “regulars” at our favorite sushi restaurant and became friends with the chef, our waitress, and most of the staff. Dinners were slow and relaxed, often lasting several hours. What I loved most about these dinners, though, were the conversations. This was the time each week that we’d really talk and catch up on matters of the heart. It was over sushi that we talked about getting married, planned our wedding, decided to sell our city house and move to the suburbs, decided it was time to start a family. Sushi dinners became the time and place we’d go deep and we came to rely on those nights to cover the big stuff.

Relationships flourish when we share matters of the heart

To flourish, relationships need these deep conversations that share the matters of the heart. We need to go beyond the brief, daily chats and discussions about schedules and to-do lists. Those are important, but great relationships need more. Relationships thrive when you share your heart with each other.

Our relationship with God is no different. So, maybe you can’t exactly take God out for a date-night dinner, but He does want us to enter into those deeper conversations with Him. Those every day prayers are great and maintain the dialog, but it’s the deep prayers, the focused prayers, that grow and develop our relationship with God.

One of the ways I take God on a “Friday night sushi date” is to commit to a period of focused prayer on a single topic. Most often these will be a period of 21 days, but sometimes longer, depending on the subject or the time it takes my heart to open to God’s answer. 21 days is great starting point – not too long, yet long enough to settle your heart on the topic and let God work on you to hear His answer.

Why 21 days of prayer?

Daniel set an example for us in Daniel 10. He was given a vision about a great war, which greatly troubled him, so he went to God in focused prayer about it. For 21 days, he fasted and prayed. He prayed three times a day, focused and deep prayers for clarity. At the end of the 21 days, God spoke to Daniel and gave him direction.

In the same way, we can go to God in focused prayer when we are in need, have a significant decision to make, or want to pray deeply about a particular subject. It’s a great way to engage God in a specific conversation and gain clarity. It’s a way we can really share the matters of our heart with God and engage with Him in a more significant way.

21 days of prayer will grow your relationship with God

Some of my biggest breakthrough moments with God, when I’ve heard Him most clearly in my life, have come through these times of dedicated, focused prayer over several weeks. It’s like the difference between talking to a good friend over texts,  Facebook posts, and quick chats versus that getaway weekend with your friend where you spend a couple days talking and really catching up. It’s those conversations that spin around common threads of the key areas of concern in your life, approaching the same topic from different angles, helping bring clarity to the question at hand.

Spending 21 days in focused prayer and really listening for God – allowing silence in your prayers to give Him space to enter into the conversation – is a way to engage in that deeper conversation. Think of what question, concern, or topic is weighing most on your heart and begin praying that in a focused way for the next 21 days. Then, listen and watch for His answers.

What’s on your heart today and have you shared that with your significant other or someone close to you? Have you shared it with God? Will you take time to grow BOTH relationships and commit to that deeper level of conversation?

Resources:

If 21 days of prayer is something new to you, or you want a guide to help you focus, I’ve written a series of 21 day devotional prayer journals, called Pray Deep, available on Amazon and other online retailers.

{These are affiliate links – and my own books – so any purchases help sustain this blog.}