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Prayer August 2, 2021 · 9:04 · 17 min

Walking the 21-item prayer list: praise, thanks, and the two boxes of rocks

The hosts walk through the article's list. On 'praise God for who he is,' they wrestle with repeating the same thankfulness without pandering: the generous-grandpa firetruck analogy, whether you need fresh daily evidence of God to be in awe (his mercies are new every morning), and the 'plain Jane doofus' problem of not being a poet — Nathaniel describes praying with his wife as 'I like donuts,' she prays the garden while he prays the back of the cereal box. A riff on Mike's video angle looking like a centaur interrupts. On repeating words, a host points to Revelation's elders crying 'holy, holy, holy' day and night and coins the word 'rewowed' — 'Lord, help me to be rewowed by you today.' On 'thank God for what he has done,' a host contrasts liturgy-as-reading with engaged prayer ('let's not read Psalm 23, let's pray Psalm 23'). On 'remember God's love and grace,' a host tells the two-boxes-of-rocks story: a woman brought two boxes of rocks to a youth group, each rock carrying a phrase retelling what God had done, and his family now writes rocks of their own so that on low days the physical pile proves God showed up. They then rattle through items 4–21 rapid-fire: love neighbors, someone in need, someone who doesn't know Jesus, love enemies, give time/money/energy, pray for church, city and nation, civic and national leaders, kindness, humility, teachability, forgiveness, obedience, a renewed mind, purity, responsibility, courage, hope.

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