Today’s Holy Habits for Headspace post is written by my friend Jaci Mun-Gavin – qualified robotics engineer, pastor’s wife, mom to six fab kids and author of Purposeful Parenting. You can check out her new parenting website here.

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You know that feeling when you have a can’t-put-it-down book, and you’re snatching moments at every opportunity to read a few more pages? When you’re a teenager, it is hidden on your lap at the dinner table or while sitting at your desk at school. When you’re a mom, it’s in your handbag, in case you have to wait two minutes in the school parking lot.

Or maybe it’s even facebook that has you this devoted to checking in to read the newsfeed at every spare moment.

When you have that thing that you’re dying to do, you long for it like chocolate. The thought of it makes you jump out of bed when your baby wakes before everyone else at family rest-time, motivated that even though you don’t get to sleep, at least you get to do the next best thing – the thing your heart desires to do right now.

Now, pause and think.

What if that thing that you longed to have more time to do, the thing that you snatched every spare moment for, was reading God’s word, or praying His will into being?

I have pleaded with God to help me to know Him better so that I may love Him more, and He has. I now long for His company and miss Him terribly when I am too busy.

I have asked for a revelation of the power of prayer, and have studied up on it to try to understand it better, and I am astounded at the power given to man to move the hand of God.

These things have left me desperately in love with being in His presence, and awesomely aware of how I can change the world, situations, myself and my family through prayer. God has committed to answering prayers of faith that are prayed in accordance with His will. This has given me an insatiable desire to pray. If you have some particular request in mind, you will never find prayer dull and tedious. I am convinced you would long for it! I have given myself permission to imagine the world, or a friend’s situation, or my own life with certain things in them until I can’t bear to have it any other way! Instead of sighing, “I wish I had more self-control,” or, “I wish my child would mature in such-and-such an area,” I can say, “I have a Godly thing that I want. Imagine if I could draw near to God and ask Him for it? I can hardly wait ‘til I can get alone so I can pour out my heart to Him and ask Him for this great thing that I am so desperate for.”

As mothers, scheduled prayer-time is very difficult to stick to, but when prayer is heaven’s best luxury, it becomes a habit. You’ll do it because you crave to. Time with Him is as delicious as chocolate, more exciting than facebook and more irresistable than the best novel.

Can’t-put-it-down pic: http://mcis.polymtl.ca/images/read-wide.jpg