Many believers admit their prayers lack depth. At times, we struggle to focus or simply don’t know what to say.
In The Lord Is My Light: A Liturgy for Daily Prayer, Trevin Wax has arranged 366 daily readings to encourage regular, prayerful meditation on God’s Word. Each entry pairs Scripture with prayers and confessions of saints throughout history. Look for us to publish an excerpt from the book in the coming weeks.
Here’s a conversation with Trevin about the book:
[Timarie Friesen]: Trevin, you’ve spent more than twenty years collecting prayers from faithful Christians. What began this quest, and how have your own prayers changed over time?
More than twenty years ago, when I was a missionary student in Romania, a devout woman from my church back in Tennessee gave me a weathered copy of The Book of Common Prayer. She was a prayer warrior whose spirituality drew from several traditions: the missionary fervor of the Baptists, the expressiveness of the Pentecostals, the richness and depth of Anglican forms. During my last year in Eastern Europe, I followed those forms and, for the first time, made older prayers part of my own prayer life.
Praying the words of saints from years gone by made me feel like a child trying on his parents’ shoes. At first, the shoes felt too big and clunky. Over time, though, I could feel my heart expanding toward the intensity and clarity I found in their words. I’ve been collecting prayers ever since.
As for how my prayers have changed, I’ve come to see that prayer is more than expressing the feelings I have in the moment. It’s also a way of drawing near to God so that he can shape the feelings I ought to have. I still pray spontaneously, of course, but relying often on the words of these faithful Christians in the past has helped me better grasp the weight of belonging to God's people. Taking the words of our forefathers and mothers in the faith and making them our own is one way we orient our hearts toward asking for (and desiring) what is best.
[TF]: How do you foresee this volume benefiting people, specifically those eager to discover tradition and structure?
For many Christians, a habit of Bible reading is easy to develop. Give them a reading plan, a study Bible, and a couple of commentaries, and they’re set. Prayer is harder. Consistent prayer that goes beyond a few minutes of repeating the same requests is a bigger challenge. I know that feeling well.
The Lord Is My Light is a structured plan for prayer and Bible reading that brings both habits together. It arranges biblical texts to highlight themes and connections in God’s Word, and then surrounds them with confessions and prayers from men and women throughout church history. For those hungry for tradition, it’s a way to put down roots. The gospel didn’t begin with us and won’t end with us. When you pray alongside Clement of Rome and Augustine, Anselm and Luther, Charles Spurgeon and Amy Carmichael and Richard Allen, you remember that you are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses.
For those looking for structure, the book offers a fixed order, but with enough variety to keep it fresh. Some elements repeat from week to week to encourage memorization. Others change, so you don’t slide into rote recitation. Finding the balance between familiarity and freshness is more art than science, but that’s the aim.
[TF]: Some people say written prayers lead to empty ritual. How would you respond to their concerns?
I share that concern. It’s possible to treat a daily liturgy as a formula, a bargaining chip to secure God’s blessing. In our fallenness, we can turn prayer into a way of evading God, saying the right words while we keep him at a distance. Our practices can become a mask.
But spontaneous prayer doesn't avoid that danger. The singer-songwriter Andrew Osenga compares much of our praying to a jam band. In youth group, he knew a few of the right phrases and could sound deep and worshipful even when his heart wasn’t in it. His prayer was “spontaneous,” but that didn’t make it genuine. He just played the licks he knew. I suspect many of us pray that way.
Scripture itself gives us written prayers. Jesus said, “Whenever you pray, say . . ." and he gave us the Lord's Prayer. Likewise, the psalms were his prayer book. If prayer is only about voicing what we already feel, then of course we’d never borrow someone else’s words. But prayer also forms the feelings we want to have. Praying the psalms draws us out of the cave of our own emotions.
Written prayers and spontaneous prayers belong together. The written ones heighten our spontaneous prayers, and the spontaneous ones breathe life into structures that could grow stale. And in the end, it is the Spirit who forms us, not our disciplines.
[TF]: Could you briefly describe the elements of each daily devotion?
Each day follows the same flow of ten elements. We begin with a Call to Prayer, like the ringing of church bells, a moment to say to your heart, I am consciously entering the presence of my King. Then comes a Confession of Faith: a creedal passage of Scripture, the Apostles’ or Nicene Creed, or a selection from confessions stretching from the Reformation to the Lausanne Covenant. Next is the Confession of Sin, often from the Scriptures or from church history, followed by a word of assurance from Scripture.
After that, we pray a Canticle, usually a psalm or another Scriptural song, and then comes the day’s Reading. Over the year, you’ll hear from every biblical author. We respond with the Gloria, pray the Lord’s Prayer, and then pour out our hearts spontaneously with our Intercessions and Personal Requests. The Prayer of the Church joins our voices to believers across the centuries. Every day concludes with a Blessing from Scripture.
Most people finish in ten to twenty minutes. Those who linger in intercession may take half an hour.
[TF]: The book follows the seasons of the traditional Church calendar, beginning with Advent. How is this significant, specifically for readers whose churches do not follow this calendar?
Most evangelicals already keep at least a part of the church calendar. We celebrate Christmas and Easter, and I've noticed that Advent has become a popular tradition in many churches, as has the season of Lent before Easter. The calendar is a way of ordering time, so that every year we walk again through the life of Jesus.
The Lord is My Light begins in Advent with prophecies of the Day of the Lord and New Testament readings that point to Christ’s return. Christmas celebrates his first coming while looking ahead to his second. Epiphany showcases his glory in his earthly ministry. Lent leads us in repentance as Jesus sets his face toward Jerusalem. Holy Week takes us to the cross and the tomb. Then comes Easter’s fifty days of celebration, the Ascension, Pentecost, and Trinity Sunday. After that, there's Ordinary Time, where we follow the early church and then journey through the main contours of the Old Testament.
For readers whose churches don’t follow this rhythm, the calendar will be a welcome tradition that helps us order the year around Christ.
[TF]: How might families or churches practice the readings together?
Something that always cheers my heart is hearing from parents about how they use these liturgies for family devotions. The way it's put together makes it easy for a dad or mom to open with the call to worship, and then parents and kids together say the confession of faith and confession of sin, (and whoever's leading can offer the word of assurance). Shorter canticles can be recited together; longer ones can alternate between leader and family. Any family member can read the Scripture passage or the prayer of the church. I know some families assign the Gloria or the Lord's Prayer to one of the kids. Offering personal intercessions and requests is a good way of bringing spontaneity into the structure. The leader is the one who closes with a blessing over the family.
For pastors and worship leaders, this liturgy could provide the structure for a corporate prayer meeting or service. Pastors can add songs and hymns between the elements, a sermon after the reading, and the Lord’s Supper after the Lord’s Prayer. I recommend closing with a hymn focused on mission before the blessing. Whether it's used by individuals or families and churches, I just pray that people will receive this liturgy as a gift, and it will help them place themselves before God, day after day with open hands.
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(Learn more about The Lord Is My Light, available for preorder, releasing November 1, 2026, from B&H Publishing Group.)
