How many times have you tried to pray…
…but it ends up being forced, boring, or plain empty – if you’re willing to admit it?
I confess, I’ve been there too!
I’ve been on a journey to discover the most powerful prayer patterns and routines:
Early Monastics
People like Augustine, St. Francis of Assisi, Meister Eckhart, even John Calvin (yes, he has something to say about this) St. Ignatius, Brother Lawrence, and Thomas à Kempis
Modern Christians
Such as Richard Foster, Henry Blackaby, James Finley, C. S. Lewis, Dallas Willard, Edmund P. Clowney, and others
Secular & Non-Christians
Doctors, Psychologists, Psychiatry, Buddhist monks, Success Authors, Anthropologists, and professionals
And most importantly, the Bible
And I think that we have in a large degree lost the ability to pray.
- Think about it: when Jesus taught the disciples to pray he did that within a devoted Jewish context. They already had the context of the Old Testament, the cultural norms, the temple and the trappings of the Mosaic Law.
- Also, when you consider it historically, hundreds of years ago powerful personal prayer was limited to a few revivals or monasteries.
Certainly not for the average person…. - We now live in a secular, postmodern culture and we have few examples left to follow. We certainly don’t learn anything about prayer in school! (Not that that was ever a good way to learn, but the norm was at least some prayer).
We are driven to distraction by:
Facebook status updates
Twitter tweets and feeds
Netflix binge watching
iPods, iPhones, iEverything
Text messages, voicemails, emails
And on and on…
Have you noticed? We never have to be alone with our thoughts anymore.
If you have 10 minutes to wait in the Dr’s/dentist’s office you don’t need to sit quietly or awkwardly, you just pull out you smartphone and check email or Facebook or play a game.
Often we don’t even fall asleep to our own thoughts anymore. The TV is on, the radio, or our personal playlist of music is on. We are constantly “on”.
When is the still, small voice of God going to break through all the noise?
- Our culture recognizes the problem and has turned to meditation. Which is great. There is so much to learn from secular (non-religious) meditation. I’ve gone down that path myself.
- However, what I’ve done naturally is difficult for some to do and that is to integrate my strong faith into the habits of meditation. Due to my theological training I could see how to move my meditation from secular to Christian.
Why not just do secular meditation?
Well there’s many benefits to it for sure… but what’s missing is the ever present reality of God. By acknowledging the Holy Spirit in your meditation it moves into a spiritual practice that is life changing. There’s a good reason that the great Christian figures of history, such as the mystics, monks, nuns, etc spent so much time in prayer and meditation. It just plain works!
But we are so pressed for time and we don’t really know what we’re doing.That’s a recipe for a dry, empty prayer life.
How many times have you sat down to pray and in just a few minutes you realize you forgot something at work, or to pick up for the kids, or to call your mother? So much other stuff comes up and before you know it you’re on your phone instead of in the presence of God?
So, Here’s what I’ve got for you:
Step 1:
Sit down
Step 2:
Put on your headphones
Step 3:
Hit Play
…and after a few minutes you will have met with God in a way that will easily and gradually transform your life.
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