Hey everybody, Gerald here.

We just wanted to do a standalone podcast to give some more instruction around 31 days

of prayer and specifically as a Bridgetown family to doing fixed-hour prayer.

I mentioned this in the teaching on Sunday, but this idea, it's really a Jewish and Christian

practice that has been happening for millennia, but it's new to most of us in the Protestant,

evangelical, kind of West Coast contemplative, charismatic stream.

And it's just this idea of setting aside a time to pray morning, noon, and evening.

And usually these prayers are scripture, praying a Psalm in the morning, the Lord's Prayer

at noon, and then we're going to teach you about the examine in the evening.

And again, we just believe at the beginning of 2021, this is a natural time to reevaluate

our lives to make goals, to many our abstaining this month from alcohol or sugar or whatever.

And we just thought this was a perfect time as a church family to refocus on prayer.

We want to, as a church family, reconnect with God and then ask Him to move through us

in our city, that His kingdom would come in Portland as it isn't heaven.

That's the dream.

So we're calling this 31 days of prayer.

And what I want to do right now is just unpack a little bit of this idea of what we call

fixed hour prayer.

Ruth Haley Barton describes it like this.

She says, fixed hour prayer anchors our daily lives in rhythms of prayer, scripture reading

and silence, ensuring that we don't get too far into any day without reorienting ourselves

to the presence of God.

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