After all, we’re busy - and prayer is one of those things about faith that can be mysterious. It doesn’t have to be that way, though.

One of the best ways to pray with your kids is a 3-step prayer that anyone can do right before bed and will help you and your kids notice, name and give thanks for how they experienced God throughout their day.

Here’s what you can do:

Gather your family after dinner or before bedtime and ask two simple questions and invite everyone to participate and share:

- What was the best part of your day?

- What was the hardest part of your day?

You can tweak those questions as you go. You might ask what is something you are grateful for and something that you struggled with. You might ask when you felt closest to God and when you felt the most distance between you and God. You may have other questions in mind as well.

And once every one has shared the best part and the hardest part, one member of the family can pray. It’s great if your child is old enough to be a regular participant – but if not, praying over them is a great gift you can give them as well.

This is so simple that it also works even when you are away - this is a way of praying you can easily do with one another on FaceTime or a phone call.

One of God’s promises throughout Scripture is that God promises to always be with us. That means God is with us in times of joy and celebration – the best parts of the day – and also in sadness, disappointment and hard things – the hardest parts of the day.

That’s a lesson that will help your kids – and you - grow in your relationship and understanding of God.

Some people call this prayer a high-low prayer and there might be other names you have heard. And it’s also rooted in an old prayer of the Ignatian spiritual tradition called The Examen.

Praying this simple prayer will help you connect with God, establish a regular routine of spiritual practice in your home and it will help you and your children notice and celebrate God’s consistent presence in your family life.

And if you don’t have children, well children aren’t required to pray this way. This is a great way for anyone to set aside time to pray, connect with God, and celebrate God’s presence each day.

If you are looking for a reliable, consistent prayer practice, try this one. I’d love to hear how it goes for you!

If you’ve spent any time at all trying to practice the faith, you’ve got some questions. Why did that thing happen in the world? What the heck is that Bible verse actually about? Why is my co-worker, who goes to church every Sunday, such a pain Monday through Saturday?

All great questions.

But in my experience the most likely reason you are struggling to shrink the gap between the relationship with God you have and the one you want to have boils down to how you spend your time.

Our time is so valuable because so many people make claims on it. You have a job that demands it. You have school that demands it. Your kids have activities that demand it. You want to actually have things like friends – and community demands it. And you have the distraction from your phone that demands even more of it.

The result is that these demands crowd out the time you wanted to spend with God and deepen your faith. You had every intention of reading your Bible and praying, but before you know it you had scrolled those 30 minutes away. You had planned for transformation - but you settled for what’s trending.

The good news, however, is that choosing the remedy is just as easy as experiencing the problem. You can grow in your relationship with God by choosing to say yes to faith. What it takes is finding a place on your schedule where you can regularly say yes to God. Because our faith grows most regularly when we find ways to consistently connect with God over time.

Can you imagine the difference it would make if you could find a way to prioritize 15 minutes sometime in the morning? What if you carved out 15 minutes between the end of dinner and when you went to bed? What if you found 10 minutes before you ate lunch to thank God for the morning?

I’m in the middle of reading Rich Villodas’ wonderful book on the Sermon on the Mount, The Narrow Path. And he uses a great phrase that gets right to the heart of this: “the best of our energy and passion.”

What are you and I giving the best of our energy and passion to – and how much goodness could we experience if we gave our best energy and passion to growing with God? What if we tried it this week and see what happens?

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We’re launching a Pray20 initiative this fall at Westside Table to help people pray for 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes at night. We’ll provide everything you need. If you want to learn more about it, comment Pray20 and I’ll be in touch.

Those are words I’ve heard plenty over the years. I don’t have what you call a poker face. When I don’t buy what someone is selling, everybody knows. When I’m mad, everybody knows. When I want to just to be done before I’m tempted to swing on somebody, everybody knows. So, I’ve been told plenty, “Fix your face!”

When you hear those Fix Your Face, that might be what comes to mind. But a few years ago, I learned there was another meaning to them. Buried deep in the Bible, in a sentence a lot of us have read over plenty, you will find wisdom that we can’t become who we were made to be if we don’t fix our face towards what matters.

In Luke Chapter 9 Jesus comes down the mountain. While he was on top of the mountain God had declared words of blessing over him to prepare him and his key leaders for what life was about to look like.

Then, he makes his way down to the flat ground and the Bible tells us this in Luke 9:51, “He set his face towards Jerusalem.” From that point to the end of the Gospel of Luke Jesus is either in Jerusalem or on his way there. Nothing will lead him away from his purpose. Nothing will pull him off course. He is going to Jerusalem – and nothing will distract him from where he is going.

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I’ve come to realize that in order to live a life that’s focused on our core beliefs and prioritizes our values, we have to fix our face. We have to make sure our face is pointed to the destination that we want to go.

Because there are so many distractions that pull us away from where we are trying to go. It’s too easy to head in the direction of the latest controversy of the day or be drawn into filling our calendars with activities or doing things that don’t lead us where we are trying to go.

Fixing our face is just another way to talk about aligning our lives towards the most important things. If we want to build a healthier lifestyle, we have to fix our face towards it. If we want to build better relationships, we have to fix our face towards the people we care most deeply about.

And if we want to grow in our relationship with God, we have to fix our face and organize our lives around building, sustaining and nurturing our relationship with God. Most of the people I talk to want to do just that – we just have a real hard time pulling away from the distractions around us and expectations people have for us.

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It’s easy to drift and to go on autopilot – but that’s how we find ourselves somewhere we never planned to be wondering how we got there.

There aren’t many things scarier than that– to look in the mirror and realize that you have gotten far away from who you are and where you set out to be. I’ve had that internal conversation – and don’t want to have to have it again. And I don’t want you to have to have it either.

And that’s what this newsletter is about – helping you avoid ending up where you don’t want to be by fixing your face to build a more connected relationship with God and living into the purpose for the life you have been given. If you want to build habits and rhythms of life that will help you connect with God and live with focus and purpose, I hope you’ll join me on this journey and subscribe at the link below.