I don’t ever remember any prayers at home as a small child. I don’t recall bed time prayers or meal graces. Perhaps, they happened and I just don’t remember. What I do remember is that sometime in early high school, around my freshman year, I became very curious spiritually. One thing I wondered about was prayer. I looked up The Lord’s Prayer in an encyclopedia and memorized it. I am not exactly sure how my prayer life grew from there, at least early on.
I now see about an eight fold progression to the life of prayer, but I want to just mention three broad movements 1) Establishing a daily time of prayer. 2) Broadening and Deepening your prayers 3) Integrating Prayer and Life
I am curious where you are. Do you have some form of a daily time of prayer? A time and/or space dedicated to just spending time with God in prayer? What is the scope of your prayer life? What prayers do you always lift up? Are there prayers you never think to pray? Do you give prayer the time you would like to? Is it an extracurricular activity you squeeze? Or is prayer an integral part of your day? How much of your prayer is ….listening? …confessing? …singing? …praying for the spiritual well-being of others? …about you? …about your community? …gratitude? …love and adoration of God? Do you pray in words, images, or actions? What obstacles do you have to prayer? What is confusing to you about prayer?
This post is uncharacteristic in that I am not going to offer any suggestions around those three movements of growth in prayer (yet). I just want to encourage you to step back and reflect on what when and how you pray. Observe yourself. Pray that God will give you clarity and insight around your prayer habits.
In the next post, I will offer some suggestions on core components of daily prayer disciplines. I will also spend a little bit of time on the importance and value of having a devotional prayer time. The other major movements of prayer I will address in subsequent posts. Until then, blessings from The Practical Disciple.
Prayer time for me is only regular and verbal at bedtime. I try to model for my son how prayer is part of a developing relationship with God. (Worship, service, and bible study are other parts of this relationship that I tend to.) This bedtime prayer is typically full of thanksgiving focusing on how abundantly blessed we are by our LORD. After thanks I pray for the needs of others and end by giving up something I am struggling with. My son (7) enjoys adding something at the end.
Prayer is also an ongoing silent dialogue with Him in the quiet times of my day. I consciously surround myself with silence throughout the day so I can “hear” better. I have few thoughts alone. By the Holy Spirit, I intentionally share nearly everything with Him.
When I am challenged or blessed in the day my first thought is typically of my closest friend, my LORD. When I cannot sleep at night, I unload my troubles on the LORD fully trusting everything to His care.
Lately I have been pondering forgiveness. I think I’m supposed to ask for it more. I have been simply trusting that it is mine already, won for me by Christ. God is helping me understand this gift more.
And John, let me tell you where all this prayer brings me. I feel it separates me from my friends and family. And I struggle with this. I feel lonely. Our commandment is to love one another. That is so stinkin hard for me too often! There are His ways and there are worldly ways. When I do listen to the radio or watch television or a movie I am struck and saddened by how far our culture, our nation is from Him and His ways. The battle is won and Christ is the victor over sin and death but I grieve for those that will not be there to rejoice in the feast to come.
We are made in His image. And we know this because we crave love; we crave justice; we seek out truth; we long for Heaven, to be in His presence. The world offers us few of the comforts of Home. Praying is like sending postcards home to our Father. And if I am patient He writes back. I am surrounded by His love notes and yet I’m troubled. How can I improve?
I didn’t grow up with much family prayer either. We had a prayer on Thanksgiving or Easter but that was about it. Even though,d I would pray at night in bed as a little girl. This is a habit I have continued on over the years. I always pray in bed at night. But now, I also pray through out the day. I am working on being more intentional with having God be a part of my day. I will say good morning to him and thank him for a new day. I will pray about people when they come to mind. I also love to praise God during the day for nature and other cool things I see and do. I speak sentence prayers throughout the day. Talking to God in a way that I would talk to others really helped.
Will you be talking any about Christian meditation? I don’t give God enough time to answer. I want to start meditating but don’t really know much about what that is like.
I look forward to your posts coming up on prayer.
“Meditation” scares some Christians. Perhaps because it so closely thought of or connected to eastern religions such as Buddhism. I studied meditation when I was searching for direction in my spiritual walk but just hadn’t totally submitted to God the Father. I learned a couple of simple approaches that have helped me in prayer. First, let me say that I model my prayers after the Lord’s prayer. I make it more personal but still following the form as an outline to direct the flow of my prayer. I think many Christians are too wordy in their prayers. I wonder if God is just sitting there thinking, I would speak to you if you would just shut up. So here is my advice:
Clear your mind of everything in your life. You could start by verbally saying the things that concern you and are on the front of your mind. Hand them over to Jesus. Lay them at His feet.
With a peaceful mind you can truly worship the Father. You don’t have to say anything or think it. I believe a smile and feeling of gratitude often says more than our lengthy prayers.
Here’s the meditation part-
Focus on your breathing. Imagine every breath as the Holy Spirit entering your body. As you exhale, attach every sin, worry, temptation, unholy thought, feelings of unworthiness, hurt, pain, brokenness to each breath exhaled. Don’t get too detailed in these thoughts or it can only distract you. Keep your focus on God the Father. Just recognize the misdeed or shortcoming without really going there, if you know what I mean. If that is too difficult just lift all transgressions to Him as you breath out. I will say, in my mind as I breath… Holy Spirit I welcome you, spirit of this world, you are not welcome – Christ in, Sin out . Take long deep breaths. The more open you are to Him, the better the probability of receiving a word, healing, prophesy, etc. from Him or just receiving inner peace. I will recite the fruit of the spirit and visualize these Godly characteristics entering as I breathe. There are a number of ways to meditate but focus on the breathing is one of the most effective techniques. As long as the focus is on being in relationship with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit you cannot go wrong with meditation. Eastern religions focus on the inner self as the core or center of the universe. Only one God is at the center of the universe and it is not me or you. Pray on. T
Beth–I had not forgotten about your comments and wanted to respond to a couple items you mentioned. Specifically:
“worship, service, and bible study are other parts of this this relationship that I tend to”–It is so important as disciples that we spiritually healthy in all of these aspects. It is easy for us to get over balanced in one area. For example, we might be great about service and fail to spend time in prayer. The result can be a life that has all the outer appearance of faithfulness, with little real relationship to God.
“Let me tell you where all this prayer brings me. I feel it separates me from my friends and family. And I struggle with this. I feel lonely.”–One aspect of spiritual growth that is often not addressed is the pain or discomfort that comes. As we draw closer to God and grow in holiness there is an intense growing awareness of sin. The gap between God and the world becomes more and more prevalent to us. We are both pained by it and we can also begin to feel very alone. Two very serious dangers arise during this phase of spiritual growth, first, a pride and/or judgmentalism and second, isolation. Both of these dangers threaten community. You mentioned earlier in your comments, pondering forgiveness. I would encourage you to take time to daily to sit before God and confess your sins. This will help combat pride and a judgmental spirit that can arise as you see the gap between God and others. Confession keeps us humble and allows us to both recognize sin around us, yet simultaneously greet it with grace. I don’t necessarily see in your comments a heavy sense of judgment, but it is a common growth problem at the place you seem to be, so I felt it worth noting. Your pain seems more rooted in compassion for lost people.
With regards to “I feel lonely” and “I am surrounded by His love notes and yet I’m troubled. How can I improve?”, here are a couple of thoughts.–Pray for a mentor and a few close spiritual friends. Pray for ones that understand the feelings that you are going through. Pray for a few spiritual friends that also see the brokenness of the world. The further you move down the spiritual path, the harder it becomes to find people who can relate to the type of pain you are describing; however, resist isolating.
-Continue to spend time in gratitude. Gratitude softens your spirit and pushes back what can feel almost like hopelessness. The sinfulness of the world around you can become almost overwhelming. Along those lines, journal where you see God working. This will help increase your sense of his presence even in the midst of the brokenness.
-Lastly, my sense is you might really have a calling toward intercession. You obviously have a heart for prayer. You see the pain of sin and the gap of depravity. You may want to try using your awareness of injustice, dishonesty, etc. to be a catalyst for prayer. When you spirit is pained let that trigger you to pray for God’s intervention, for some advent and movement of God’s Holy Spirit.
Well, these are just few quick thoughts. I apologize for taking so long to get to your comments. Our church has been very busy running Vacation Bible School this past week. It was a week full of fun, faith and blessings. Thank you for your patience and hang in there.
Terry–“Meditation” is a subject worthy of at least a post or two because you are so correct regarding the aversion that sometimes arises in people when it is mentioned. Thank you for sharing a practical and very tangible method for meditating in a way that is appropriate to Christians. The key to meditation that is acceptable for a Christian is illuminated in your last couple of sentences where you talk about focus. We need to make sure that the focus of whatever practice we use is ultimately on God. I have had a variety of disciplines in this regard with centering prayer being one of the most significant practices. Centering prayer is an old contemplative practice of prayer. I have written a couple of posts about centering prayer. I heard it once said, “That centering prayer isn’t so much about attention as it is intention.” Focusing on our breathe or a quiet walk has a way of helping us slow our very busy minds down to a pace. where we can be focused for a bit on relating to God. One of my favorite meditations is to simply take a verse or phrase from scripture and simply ponder it until God begins to reveal to me how it speaks to my life. I’ll see if I can’t work up a few practical posts on the topic of meditation. Thank you for raising the topic.