The moment someone spoke the word “city,” I immediately saw a skyline. I mean, what else would you think? A city indicated a cluster of multiple levels of buildings that housed various businesses and people. So, when I heard the phrase “love the city” from Vintage Church’s mission statement my first understanding of this was to love the actual city itself. By loving the city itself I figured it meant you worked in it, rooted for the teams, took part in festivities, and became a full on supporter of wherever you are planted. From sitting in a coffee shop, however, I have learned that is not what it means to love the city

Over the last two weeks we’ve been looking at the spiritual disciplines, working to understand what it means to “train” for our spiritual lives. We now come to the spiritual discipline of prayer. Prayer is simply a conversation with God, a direct conversation with God. It is essential in any relationship to have communication between one another and prayer is how we converse with God. It truly is a gift, but a discipline at the same time. Although we are told to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17),  most Christians spend on average less than 10 minutes a day praying. As a church kid, I believed prayer was when you closed your eyes and bowed your head before a meal or when the pastor told you to do so on Sunday. Though this is a sign of respect, the Bible provides us with different ways to pray. Today we are going to look at six different examples of how people prayed in the Bible and also discuss how we can incorporate these ways into our own lives.