Chris Tiegreen - The One Year Praying in Faith Devotional: 365 Daily Bible Readings on Hearing God and Believing His Promises

Visit Tyndale online at tyndale.com.

Visit Tyndale Momentum online at tyndalemomentum.com.

TYNDALE, Tyndales quill logo, Tyndale Momentum, the Tyndale Momentum logo, and The One Year are registered trademarks of Tyndale House Ministries. One Year and The One Year logo are trademarks of Tyndale House Ministries. Tyndale Momentum is a nonfiction imprint of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois.

The One Year Praying in Faith Devotional: 365 Daily Bible Readings on Hearing God and Believing His Promises

Copyright 2021 by Chris Tiegreen. All rights reserved.

Cover photograph of misty mountains copyright by Andy Wright on Unsplash. All rights reserved.

Designed by Ron C. Kaufmann

Edited by Sarah R. Kelley

Published in association with the literary agency of Mark Sweeney & Associates, Carol Stream, Illinois.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked ESV are from The ESV Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version), copyright 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NASB are taken from the (NASB) New American Standard Bible, copyright 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version, copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked TLB are taken from The Living Bible, copyright 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Tyndale House Publishers at , or call 1-855-277-9400.

ISBN 978-1-4964-4611-4

Build: 2021-10-11 11:28:59 EPUB 3.0

YOUVE PRAYED. Youve waited. And youve wondered. Youve eagerly embarked on this journey of faith, but that journey has raised a lot of questions and involved long distances between resting points. Like many Christians, you know about Gods promises and youve received answers to prayer, but youve also felt as if some prayers have led nowhere. That combination of beliefs and experiences is disorienting at times. On the one hand, you live and pray with a strong conviction that God answers prayer. On the other, you arent quite sure how it all works.

Your journey of faith, no matter how confusing it may be at times, creates a wonderful opportunity to draw closer to God and dive deeper into his Word. Thats one of the purposes of growing your faith, and its also the purpose of this devotional. These readings will help you walk out that journey with increasing insight and meaning if youve ever

• been frustrated with a shot-in-the-dark approach to prayer;
• stood in the gap between promise and fulfillment, questioning why things are taking so long;
• wondered why God can seem so close one day and so distant the next;
• felt the tension between your deep desires and his will; or
• needed daily encouragement about the challenges of prayer and the hope God offers when we bring our requests to him.

Sometimes we need a thousand assurances that Gods promises are true and our prayers are effective before we believe it. Consider this devotional to be a collection of 365 of those assurances.

But its more than just assurances and affirmations. This book is an explorers guide to the dynamics of faith: how it works in the human heart and mind and how we can train ourselves to believe more purely, consistently, and purposefully. The readings will connect a lot of points between the thoughts and attitudes we bring into our prayers and the answers and fulfillment we receive from them.

There are many kinds of prayer. This devotional touches on adoration, thanksgiving, and confession, but it focuses primarily on requests, petitions, or supplicationsnot because asking is the most important kind of prayer but because it seems to be the kind we have the most questions about. We instinctively bring our longings to God and cry out to him in times of need, and we crave his responses. So these readings are centered on those prayers of faith, those times when we ask God for something specific. This devotional is not meant to be a comprehensive treatment of faith, nor a complete picture of prayer. But it does go deep into the spiritual, mental, emotional, relational, and circumstantial dynamics we experience in the prayer process.

Youll see some common themes and tensions in these pages, all of which are rooted in Scripture. For example, God tells us we can be confident that he will answer our prayers but calls us to be flexible when he doesntor at least when he doesnt answer them the way we expect him to. He wants to both accomplish his purposes and fulfill our desires, and learning how these two concerns merge can be both frustrating and rewarding. We experience tension between the here and now of our lives and the there-and-then of eternity, even while our prayers operate in both realms. We keep our eyes on the circumstances around us but also have to search behind the scenes, where only faith can see. We struggle to discern the difference between Gods voice and our own impulses, between Gods silence and Gods no, and between waiting patiently in faith and taking action in faith. We encounter mysteries and forks in the road at almost every turn.

That is the challenge, adventure, and joy of genuine prayer, and its a significant part of our walk with God. My prayer is that this book will help you draw closer to him on all counts and at every turn. May you experience him, connect your heart to his, and receive his warm and generous responses more and more each day.

[Jesus said,] If you remain in me and my words remain in you, you may ask for anything you want, and it will be granted! JOHN 15:7

ONE OF THE PRIMARY WAYS God accomplishes his purposes on earth is through the prayers of his people. And one of our primary motivations for prayer is the desires in our hearts. Its a remarkable dynamic, but we seem to have something of a love-hate relationship with it. On the one hand, the longings within us instinctively find a voice in our prayers; on the other, we mistrust those desires and plead for his will to be done. Scripture shows us, however, that God blesses our requests when they are founded on a relationship of delight with him (Psalm 37:4). And Jesus assures us that our desires are trustworthy when our lives are based on him and his words (John 15:7). As much as we may mistrust our own desires, Scripture points us back to them.

Its true that God wants our desires to align with his, but thats not the unreachable, shot-in-the-dark kind of process we sometimes think it is. Throughout Scripture, his relationship with his people suggests not a unilateral, find-my-will-or-else agenda but a blending of hearts. We were created to come close to a Father who has made himself vulnerable to the longings of his people and to absorb his desires as he cares for and works through ours. He doesnt want to accomplish his purposes arbitrarily, independent of our hopes and dreams. He wants us to dream with him.