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A fellow struggler in prayer.
I don’t know how you feel about prayer, but I have often felt a little lost, rambling, bouncing around, and at times a little rubbish.
And so here a thread of a few things that may help you, if you often feel like me:
I don’t know how you feel about prayer, but I have often felt a little lost, rambling, bouncing around, and at times a little rubbish.
And so here a thread of a few things that may help you, if you often feel like me:
Understand the way you usually do things. I am fairly systematic. Working in engineering I would take each product from the blue print piece by piece. My day is organised with lists and tasks. Time slots and plans. But I am also a Pentecostal, and prayer tends to be more free...
...And spontaneous. Less guided and more led. And I love the movement I am in. What I’ve come to realise is you can be systematic and spontaneous. By planning your prayer time and organising the time and using guides. With these you can find the spontaneous moments.
So I plan morning, Midday and evening prayer times. And I use the time in different ways. And I use the days with different themes drawn from the Lord’s Prayer.
In the mornings I will also start with stillness, to fix my attention on God. I will pray the Lord’s Prayer, sometimes the apostles creed, and ask the Holy Spirit to me in scripture. I will note things I read to bring to prayer either as thanksgiving or request.
I will sing a song of worship using Spotify and then focus my prayers in three ways: what I’ve read, the Lord’s Prayer theme and then an increasing circle of requests starting with me, my family, my church often using our address book as my guide, churches, our town, nation.
Before then committing the day to God with anything in particular.
At midday I join with church members to pray the Lord’s Prayer together. I find praying with others much easier than alone. Again using a different theme lead by different people.
At midday I join with church members to pray the Lord’s Prayer together. I find praying with others much easier than alone. Again using a different theme lead by different people.
In the evening I will use different prayer apps or books to help with a short time of prayer and often use The Shema of Deut 6. This isn’t as long as the morning. But evening prayer is as important as morning.
On Saturdays my rhythm is different and I tend to praying just using Lord’s Prayer and my reading often focusing on tomorrow.
On Sunday I pray for the things ahead with two major requests. God be glorified and transform lives. We will pray before service and now also a prayer service in the evenings.
I used to resist using the Lord’s Prayer because I read that just praying it was vain repetition. Using the Lord’s Prayer gives me a structure that spontaneous prayers happen within and it’s the prayer Jesus gave us.
Books and apps can be really helpful. Lectio365 have helped me in one season. The book of common prayer in another. We also have a 2000 year history of written prayers and I have a book of these I have started to draw from.
The book of Psalms was Jesus prayer book and it’s ours, so using the Psalms as our prayers is necessary. The psalms give us the full range of emotions and a deep theology of practiced prayer.
One line prayers prayed throughout the day have been really helpful to have a rhythm of prayers.
I find it often easier to pray in groups than alone as I am less distracted and people pray things I haven’t thought of. To which I can add my prayer, Amen. It isn’t a statement to close it’s a prayer of agreement.
I learnt to pray not through books or conferences but by spending with people who pray. I listened, heard, picked up good and bad habits (saying Lord every other word) but I learnt from see other believers communing with God.
Again. Lists are really helpful to me as I can often forget things particularly if I feel the pressure of, I need to pray something, and my mind goes blank.
And finally, I think, I pray in tongues. A prayer gift that has been given by Jesus through the Spirit to enable us to pray & praise. And a gift I need and use. A prayer language that though my mind is unfruitful builds me up.
Prayer is radical & at times hard for us because in an age of, if you can’t see, feel, touch it it’s isn’t real, we place our lives and trust in one who we can’t see, feel, touch. It sets us apart from our culture and that’s part of the struggle I think.
A couple of ideas that I thought about as a few tweets that might help others has turned into a bit of a ramble of experience and idea. But if you struggle I hope they help you.
