Wait—don’t skip this lesson! This isn’t a typical guilt-inducing, anxiety-producing, schedule-restricting lesson on prayer. No one will come to our homes to peer over our shoulders, stopwatch in hand, evaluating our devotional time. No one will inspect our knees for callouses caused by long hours of prayer.

No, the goal of this lesson is to help us see prayer as a way to lighten our burdens, not add to them; to relieve anxiety, not to increase it. The last thing we need is for someone to pour fuel on the fire of our angst. We already have enough of that—from not quite being the people we really want to be, and from not living the Christian life as abundantly as we’d hoped. Instead, this lesson will help us open up the lines of continual communication with our Lord, giving us joy, hope, and stability in our anxiety-producing world.