Developing Your Own Life Of Prayer
Developing Your Own Life Of Prayer READING THE BIBLE PRAYERFULLY
Private, prayerful Bible reading is intimate and personal. It's like exploration - it takes daunt and derring-do to dare to do it right. Be fearless -- ask God to show you, through the text. The very act of telling God about it turns even your bitterest thoughts into a strange kind of prayer. God's seen much worse out of us. You won't be struck by lightning for having even thought of what you're thinking. The decision to entrust God with the matter turns the strongest doubt into an act of faith and the most stubborn question into a plea of faith.
Much of the Bible is actually made up of prayers. Many of the Psalms and sections of the histories and the Prophets are prayers. The New Testament letters contain short prayers, such as the one in Ephesians 3:14-21. The best-known prayer in Scripture is the one that Jesus taught.
The Bible can also be the hub of your own prayers. No method is needed, but for some of us, a method may help us stay focused, disciplined, and open-hearted. One of the oldest is ((graphe)must become the living word(logos)which then becomes "Revelation & Power), and it's geared toward helping us listen to the Spirit that speaks through Scripture. One form of it goes like this : first, quiet your mind down. If you find that hard to do, it often helps that you focus on taking deep breaths. Once you're gotten some focus, begin softly speaking a chosen Bible passage. Then, read it again real slow, this time listening for a word or phrase that stirs you, speaking again and again until one stands out. Then stay with that word or phrase, and ask why the Spirit is stirring you with it. Take what you're thinking, feeling, and remembering, and offer it back to God in prayer. Then repeat the process. You'll be finished when you get a sense of peace about it. Or, you may finish with a sense of exhausted disturbance, in which you know you've poured it out for now, but you're still being stirred in a way that may only be resolved as the day goes on. (If so, keep going back to that word or phrase throughout the day, and see what it has to do with your life.) Most people who use some version of the find that at some time during it, the Spirit reveals something about living the faith.
WHEN PRAYER FALLS FLAT
Prayer isn't always exciting. In fact, it usually isn't. It's usually ordinary. That's okay; ordinary is good. But sometimes, prayer is worse than that : something's missing.
Sometimes, you're bored. The habit is there, but the relationship is at a standstill. (You married folks should ask your spouse about that....) That means it's time to stop yawning and see what's happening with you in prayer. It may be time to :
- change where you pray.
- remove all distraction from the outside (cell phones, beepers, limiting how many people know where you're praying, etc.)
- use a different prayer position.
- allow yourself to move around. (As a diabetic, I know how sleepy I can get when the blood sugar rises, as it often does when I'm still for too long.)
- check out your diet.
- try one of the many simple devotional techniques.
- get more sleep.
- stop overworking yourself.
(Please note that there's a lot of 'sometimes', 'maybe', and 'often' in this section. It's a spiritual matter, and those aren't well-suited to tight rules. You'll have to learn how to discern the Spirit's voice in your situation.)
Usually, such minor adjustments are enough to curb your drifting. But, let's say, you've made the adjustments, they work briefly, and then SLAM! It hits you. God's not there. Sometimes one must taste the absence in order to keep savoring the presence. And sometimes God steps aside so you can learn to persevere in prayer, to keep working at it on trust.
But then, as you keep plugging away at it, it becomes clear that something else is at work. It's not really that God has stepped away, after all. It's that there's a communication breakdown. God's apparent silence is due to a problem at your end. Something's rocking the relationship. When you reach this point (and sooner or later you will), it's time for you to find out what's up. What could it be?
Some common short-circuits :
- Maybe you're harboring resentment or anger against someone, or against a group of someones. In that case, first hold them in prayer, then ask God to forgive you for the anger, then ask God to open up an opportunity to go to that person and renounce that anger in their presence. Then, get up and go reconcile with that person.
- Maybe the one you're mad at is God. Whatever it is between you and God, it does no good to pout and go off to sulk. Say it. SCREAM it, if that's what it takes. Let your body express the anger. Whatever you do, share your anger with God. The Lord will see you being truthful, and will respond with love and grace.
- Maybe you're focusing on prayer, but God was calling you to spend less time praying so you can spend it doing something that God wants you to do.
- Maybe you're still involved with the pretenders to the Lord's throne. Maybe it's superstition. Maybe dabbling in the occult, or paganisms old or new. Maybe you still 'play' with an ouija board or tarot cards, or pay attention to horoscopes and palm readers. You may think of it merely as a way to spit in the face of unjust religious authorities, or maybe as just a fun little game and nothing more. All reasons are bad reasons. Even a little of this does a lot of damage to your relationship with the real Lord. You're cheating on God; you're being a disloyal lover.
- Perhaps God has become quiet so you could hear your own doubts. You may not even have known they were there. But they are. When God is quiet, you may for the first time actually become able to know them, name them, and deal with them before their voice rules yours.
- Maybe you're withholding from the Lord the fruits of God's most creative gift to you : your imagination. For instance, imagine yourself in a scene from the Bible, or visualize how you would go about being of service to others, yielding each detail before God as you envision it. The richer the detail, the more real it will seem to you.
- Maybe you've had deep mystical interchange with God before, but you rarely thank or praise the Lord for anything specific. Simple gratitude goes a long way toward making you spiritually humble and receptive.
- Maybe the Lord can't get a word in edgewise from all your talking. To pray right, there must also be lots of time for quiet listening.
- Perhaps you recently compromised with the world around you in a way that compromises your relations with God at its very root. For example, the Christians among the executives of Enron or WorldCom, whose dealings smack of the idol Mammon (Wealth). Which god do you follow?
- Maybe you're praying amiss (discussed elsewhere).
- Maybe when God's trying to tell you something, you change the subject. Trouble is, you'll fail to duck God this way, because while you can distract people that way, you won't take the Lord off focus.
- Maybe you spend a lot of time and attention on prayer methods, theologies, and histories of devotion, one layer of complexity atop another until it resembles a Rube Goldberg contraption. Or, maybe your life itself has become too complex for you. It's time to simplify, to turn all attention back to God.
- Maybe you're saying to God, "Here, You do it!", but God's been trying to tell you, "No, that's your responsibility." God makes us a partner in the divine mission, and that's a great honor, but it means struggling, working, breaking, hurting. And from that, growing, learning, deepening, wisening.
- Maybe there's a specific sinful act you do that's been eating away at you. A sin that angers God. When you at last can name the sin and call it sin, you can take it before God to ask for forgiveness. Prayer time can be the start of repentance - turning away from the sin and committing yourself against it with your life.
- Maybe you're not convinced deep down that you really need God and need to be a part of God's purposes. Maybe you think your own plans are doing well and God's help would be just a nice added 'plus'. Yet, when there's no sense of weakness, no keen awareness of our human limits, no awareness that it's God's power that makes things work, then prayer loses its sense of urgency, and life loses its touch with reality.
Many people wonder how someone can have a 'relationship' with the invisible, transcendent God. But these ways of blocking out God are, for the most part, the same ways we block out other people, and they were discovered by the faithful thousands of years before there was such a thing as 'psychology'. These blockages, and many others, undermine the trust and truthfulness that's needed for building any relationship, including that with the Creator of All, the Lover of My Soul. Awaken to these possibilities, and keep praying for guidance on these matters, even if you find your faith to be weak. You'll be led further into a mature faith in Christ. Then prayer can once again be spending time alone with Someone who loves you. Even when you're stuck, prayer is still working if you keep at it. It's working because the Spirit is at work; prayer's working on you.
Another suggestion is to get one person to be your prayer partner - not your pastor (though your pastor needs one, he/she needs to choose his/her own). Seek out someone of the same sex whom you can trust, who is spiritually mature, and who is willing to commit the time and effort to it.
In A Life Of Prayer! catcmo2006
Much of the Bible is actually made up of prayers. Many of the Psalms and sections of the histories and the Prophets are prayers. The New Testament letters contain short prayers, such as the one in Ephesians 3:14-21. The best-known prayer in Scripture is the one that Jesus taught.
Sometimes, you're bored. The habit is there, but the relationship is at a standstill. (You married folks should ask your spouse about that....) That means it's time to stop yawning and see what's happening with you in prayer. It may be time to :
- change where you pray.
- remove all distraction from the outside (cell phones, beepers, limiting how many people know where you're praying, etc.)
- use a different prayer position.
- allow yourself to move around. (As a diabetic, I know how sleepy I can get when the blood sugar rises, as it often does when I'm still for too long.)
- check out your diet.
- try one of the many simple devotional techniques.
- get more sleep.
- stop overworking yourself.
(Please note that there's a lot of 'sometimes', 'maybe', and 'often' in this section. It's a spiritual matter, and those aren't well-suited to tight rules. You'll have to learn how to discern the Spirit's voice in your situation.)
Some common short-circuits :
- Maybe you're harboring resentment or anger against someone, or against a group of someones. In that case, first hold them in prayer, then ask God to forgive you for the anger, then ask God to open up an opportunity to go to that person and renounce that anger in their presence. Then, get up and go reconcile with that person.
- Maybe the one you're mad at is God. Whatever it is between you and God, it does no good to pout and go off to sulk. Say it. SCREAM it, if that's what it takes. Let your body express the anger. Whatever you do, share your anger with God. The Lord will see you being truthful, and will respond with love and grace.
- Maybe you're focusing on prayer, but God was calling you to spend less time praying so you can spend it doing something that God wants you to do.
- Maybe you're still involved with the pretenders to the Lord's throne. Maybe it's superstition. Maybe dabbling in the occult, or paganisms old or new. Maybe you still 'play' with an ouija board or tarot cards, or pay attention to horoscopes and palm readers. You may think of it merely as a way to spit in the face of unjust religious authorities, or maybe as just a fun little game and nothing more. All reasons are bad reasons. Even a little of this does a lot of damage to your relationship with the real Lord. You're cheating on God; you're being a disloyal lover.
- Perhaps God has become quiet so you could hear your own doubts. You may not even have known they were there. But they are. When God is quiet, you may for the first time actually become able to know them, name them, and deal with them before their voice rules yours.
- Maybe you're withholding from the Lord the fruits of God's most creative gift to you : your imagination. For instance, imagine yourself in a scene from the Bible, or visualize how you would go about being of service to others, yielding each detail before God as you envision it. The richer the detail, the more real it will seem to you.
- Maybe you've had deep mystical interchange with God before, but you rarely thank or praise the Lord for anything specific. Simple gratitude goes a long way toward making you spiritually humble and receptive.
- Maybe the Lord can't get a word in edgewise from all your talking. To pray right, there must also be lots of time for quiet listening.
- Perhaps you recently compromised with the world around you in a way that compromises your relations with God at its very root. For example, the Christians among the executives of Enron or WorldCom, whose dealings smack of the idol Mammon (Wealth). Which god do you follow?
- Maybe you're praying amiss (discussed elsewhere).
- Maybe when God's trying to tell you something, you change the subject. Trouble is, you'll fail to duck God this way, because while you can distract people that way, you won't take the Lord off focus.
- Maybe you spend a lot of time and attention on prayer methods, theologies, and histories of devotion, one layer of complexity atop another until it resembles a Rube Goldberg contraption. Or, maybe your life itself has become too complex for you. It's time to simplify, to turn all attention back to God.
- Maybe you're saying to God, "Here, You do it!", but God's been trying to tell you, "No, that's your responsibility." God makes us a partner in the divine mission, and that's a great honor, but it means struggling, working, breaking, hurting. And from that, growing, learning, deepening, wisening.
- Maybe there's a specific sinful act you do that's been eating away at you. A sin that angers God. When you at last can name the sin and call it sin, you can take it before God to ask for forgiveness. Prayer time can be the start of repentance - turning away from the sin and committing yourself against it with your life.
- Maybe you're not convinced deep down that you really need God and need to be a part of God's purposes. Maybe you think your own plans are doing well and God's help would be just a nice added 'plus'. Yet, when there's no sense of weakness, no keen awareness of our human limits, no awareness that it's God's power that makes things work, then prayer loses its sense of urgency, and life loses its touch with reality.
In A Life Of Prayer! catcmo2006
posted by Anonymous @ 9:18 AM
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