15 days in...

15 days has passed since Sean and I started the 30 day 30 minute prayer challenge. 15 days of growing closer to God through prayer, through directed Bible reading, through purposefully spending 30 minutes of my day. 

When I first started the challenge, I thought 30 days that will be hard but in reality 30 minutes is nothing. You are give 48 segments of 30 minutes of your day, and except for 1 day I missed, I have purposefully used at least 1 segment of those 30 minutes we are given each day. The first few days, I will admit, it was challenging to sit there to pray and read God's word. As the days passed, I found it easier to carve out those 30 minutes and if I didn't have a full 30 minutes, I split up the time. 

Now I look forward to those times, it is like when you make plans with a friend to hang out, to go shopping or whatever you have planned, you primarily look forward to being in that friend's presence and growing your relationship. It is the very same with a relationship with God, He wants us to draw closer to Him, He longs for the time we set aside to be with Him, to talk to Him, to read from His Word. 

These past 15 days have shown me different ways to pray - whether it is just to praise God, to meditate on His word, or to lift up requests to Him. 

I wanted to share what yesterday's prayer time because I love the imagery described. I was instructed to read Psalm 1 and then meditate on it to ask God to make me a more devoted person of the Bible.

{Psalm 1:3} he is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. 

I love the tree planted by a stream yielding fruit in the season because without the water, the tree wouldn't yield the fruit in the appropriate season. The tree would eventually cease to produce fruit if there was no water ever given and some goes with us, we need the water in this case God's word, to produce fruit, to grow spiritually. 

Like the rose in these photos, it needs the water to sustain growth, to bloom, to grow and without it, the flower, what could be a beautiful rose would just wither and die. And the remaining 15 days are ahead of me and I am looking forward to seeing what God will teach me.

That's my update!