Prayer is something that I often struggle with.
When I was younger, I never prayed. It just wasn’t something we did except at church. I can remember sitting in a treehouse one summer in Dallas, sent out on assignment to pray and listen to God. What? I read the Bible instead - something I never did and wasn’t interested in.
Even though I didn’t practice prayer, I had learned a method of prayer. It’s stuck with me all these years, and it’s a blueprint I use today. As I learned it, this method is called PATH prayer. It’s an acronym reminding us how to pray. Praise, Adoration, Thanksgiving, and Help. We start out with how awesome God is, and then move on towards supplication.
When I returned to religion after my first period of atheism, I kept a prayer journal. I subscribed to a little devotional magazine called The Upper Room. Each issue includes daily Bible readings, and short reflection written by readers, and a very simple prayer. I would walk to the cafeteria on campus for breakfast and have a date with Jesus, reading the passage and reflection, then copying the prayer word for word in my prayer journal. It was a great start for me.
I got the journal idea from my grandmother. She keeps a prayer journal and writes every morning. I don’t know what she writes, but she’ll use up three pages or more and spend an hour sometimes just writing to God. I thought writing my prayers down, like a letter, might be easier than just “thinking” them (there was no way I’d be praying out loud at that time, by the way).
After a while, I became more confident in beseeching the Almighty. During my first year of Mormonism, I’d meet Jesus for breakfast still, reading Psalms and a few chapters in the Book of Mormon. Then, I’d write a letter to God from the heart, rather than copying one someone else wrote. By that time, I’d become comfortable kneeling in prayer every evening and telling God about my day. Out loud, unless my roommate was there.
I prayed regularly, but my relationship with prayer was not always the best. I often felt like I was talking to a wall. I often felt uninspired, like my prayers didn’t matter or weren’t being heard. I usually prayed anyway, begging God to show me that I was being heard.
In spring 2016, I lost my faith and stopped attending church. I stopped praying, too, because I didn’t believe in God.
Many months later, when my heart began opening up to the idea of religion again, the first way I prayed was yoga. I’d started doing yoga prior, mostly for the physical benefits I gained as a dancer. But I started doing it as a way to connect to myself, to others, to that Presence that permeates all. I’d start each class with stillness. I set an “intention” - I decided what I was praying for during each session.
I also was intrigued by the use of prayer beads. I memorized a couple of short prayers - the Lord’s Prayer, Hail Mary, and a couple of others I found or wrote. I found a beaded bracelet (a full rosary seemed way too long for me to start out with) and created a pattern to pray. I found this an excellent way to calm and center myself, letting the words of one or two prayers sink deeply into my being.
When I was ready to worship and pray with a community again, I attended many churches. I was really attracted to methods of reaching God that included my body - things like yoga, prayer beads, kneeling in worship, and others. I attended Catholic mass sometimes, where people kneeled in reverence and asked God for forgiveness. I attended Pentecostal churches sometimes, where people clapped, danced, and lifted their hands to heaven praising and thanking God for forgiving them and doing all kind of other things. I was and am amazed at all the ways that humanity had found to pray.
Regardless, I haven’t been really disciplined lately about making time to pray alone. Sure, I go to church and I pray with my kids at church and I pray in church services. But outside of church? I prayed close to never.
Just a couple of weeks ago, I finally watched the film War Room. WOW. Highly recommend. This film inspired and challenged me to really think about my prayer life and what kind of efforts I was making to connect to the Divine. Then, that very same week, the pastor at the church I attend gave a message about spending time with God through prayer. His emphasis: Pray without ceasing. Pray not just in church, not just morning and night, but all the time.
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The Christian calendar is moving into the season of Lent. Lent is a season of penitence and preparation. Lasting forty days (like the Biblical flood or Jesus’ time in the desert), Lent is a time for us to recenter our priorities. Some people fast during Lent, clearing out space to make room for God.
In Lent, we have there main focuses:
- Disciplined walking with Jesus. Lent is the time to reflect on our discipleship and recommit ourselves to spiritual disciplines.
- Renewal of the baptismal renunciation of sin and evil. At baptism (certainly in Methodist and LDS churches, possibly others), we take a stand against evil and register ourselves in the fight against sin. We covenant to a life filled with work to eradicate sin in our lives and evil, injustice, oppression, and societal sins in the world.
- Daily adherence to Christ. This is more than just following Christ or behaving like a Christian. This is about spending time with Jesus, soaking up Jesus’ being into our souls. This is about loving deeply and looking into the eyes of Jesus to become like him. This is about tying ourselves up in Christ, adoring Christ, and listening purposefully.
This Lent, I am challenging myself to get serious about prayer.
Prayer is a spiritual practice, a spiritual discipline. Being disciplined about this will bring rewards as I develop a greater relationship with God and listen. Through prayer, I can receive strength to follow through with other religious disciplines as well. Prayer is the foundation upon which all other disciplines are built.
Prayer is a renunciation of sin and evil. One Muslim wrote regarding the five daily prayers something like, “If you are sincerely praying five times each day, you will not just stand up and sin.” Prayer is a defense against evil. Prayer strengthens us in the fight. When we pray, we receive spiritual aid to fight injustice and oppression. Further, prayer opens the door for instruction on what are to do in this fight. Once again, prayer is the foundation upon which the renunciation of evil is built. Prayer is fundamental and completely necessary.
Finally, prayer is adhering to Christ. What other way have we to directly experience our Lord? When we read the Bible or stories of saints, we read how God interacted with others, and how they experienced God. In prayer, however, we are directly linked to God - no intermediary. Prayer is a date with Jesus. In prayer we speak to God and we listen to God. In prayer we learn the nature of God and our souls are filled with God’s goodness and life. In prayer we listen purposefully and receive nourishment to go on. Prayer is the foundation for any relationship with the divine.
Prayer is our foundation. Prayer is the foundation of every spiritual discipline and of the Christian life itself. Prayer is the foundation of the renunciation of sin and evil. Prayer is the foundation of a relationship with the Divine.
This Lent, I intend to pull out my hammer and work on that foundation.
“And now, my sons, remember, remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall.”
Helaman 5:12
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