Being a Woman of God - Prayer

One of the things that I have always found hard to do is to PRAY! After all, prayer is one of the spiritual disciplines that all Christians are called to do regularly. Now I am not saying that I never pray, but lately I have found that my prayers are not very focused and are full of the following types of requests:

"God, please give me the strength"
"Lord, please help me... I feel like I am drowning"
"Lord, please watch over ______" etc. etc.

Now I am not saying that these kinds of prayers are in and of themselves bad, I am just saying that most days I find the only time I pray is little 2-second calls for help when I am stressed or upset. I have not been talking to my very best friend! And that really is who Jesus is... our very best friend.

It was with this struggle in mind, that I began searching the Internet and books exhaustively, for anything and everything that would help me to improve my prayer life.

Some of the basic things that I learned were.

• Who could fly a plane or run a marathon without much previous and rigorous training? No one is born knowing how to pray and being great at it. The apostle Paul tells us to "pray continually". Is this even possible? Just as no one can run a marathon without training, no one can pray continually without training. 1 Thessalonian 5:17 "pray without ceasing".
• Learning to pray is a bit like learning to swim. It can only happen in the water, despite rear, insecurities and doubts.
• Prayer requires concentration and focus.
• Prayer builds up our humility, dependence on God and compassion for others.
• Sometimes prayer is a "battleground". Prayer can be difficult and produce anxiety. Sometimes it is while praying that God reveals to us what needs changing, what needs to be done. Sometimes, prayer can be a painful mirror.
• Our prayers are not primarily for changing God's mind about who we are, what we need, and how we please God.

I have been looking deep within myself and trying to figure out what is keeping me from praying more regularly and with more fervor. Lately, I have made prayer like "one more item to accomplish on my to-do list". And prayer certainly should not be seen as only something that we have to do, but as something that we want to and long to do. I have also beat myself up, when I have not spend x number or minutes or hours in prayer during the day. I don't think God wants us to spend everyday beating ourselves up over the things that we do not do, but to learn from the experience.

It was with this knowledge that I signed up for 3 sessions on "Contemplative Prayer" that were being offered by our church. Every so often, my church offers sessions on Sunday nights where we can learn and study various areas of the Christian life. The sessions were taught by the sister of one of our pastors, Verdele Polson. Now I have always thought that you have to kneel or lay a certain way, fold my hands a certain way and pray a certain, set way, but when I read the following description of the sessions, I thought that maybe this might be a way for me to spend more time in prayer and to enrich my prayer life.

"The popular definition of "contemplation" is to think about and consider something from a variety of angles. But the classical definition is an experience of Loving Presence which comes as a pure gift given as God chooses - not as an outcome we achieve through our own efforts or discipline. So Contemplative Prayer is a radical openness to God's presence, a trustful waiting, acknowledging that God is God, the source and the destination, the means and the end of all our prayer, whatever form it may take. It leads to deeper relationship with God which always transforms us into a responsive, participative, compassionate presence with God in the world. Our focus over these three weeks will be less on teaching, more on praying and sharing our experience. We will practice 3-4 forms of contemplative prayer and the disposition of a listening heart. "

What really grabbed my attention was that this course would teach me to be more open to God's presence and would help me to build a deeper relationship with God. The only thing that I was scared about was that the description kind of made it sound like some kind of new-age thing to do and that was definitely not what I wanted to get involved in. But I thought that since the church was offering it, it must be biblical.

Thankfully I did not listen to those voices in my head and gave the first session a chance. After all, if I did not feel comfortable after the first session, I could simply just not attend the last two nights of the session.

For the first session last night, Verdele decided to talk about praying through the scriptures. This was something that I had heard about being done by more mature Christians, but I had never thought that I was strong enough in the Word to be able to do this and to hear God's voice speaking to me. Verdele said that we should open these times of prayer remembering to ask God to open your heart and that it may be receptive to the gift God knows that you need at that time. The next thing that we were asked to do was to ask God to guide us to the verse that he wished us to focus on and once we had the verse, we were to do the following:

1. Begin reading your chose text very slowly with an open heart and mind. We were told not to study the text, analyze it or look in our footnotes. We were simply asked to read it and let the words flow over us.
2. When a particular sentence or phase or single word "lights up" or "rings a bell", seems striking and inviting, attracts your attention for some reason, put the bible down. Resist the temptation to go on, and do not start thinking up reasons why the phrase has claimed your attention.
3. Hold onto the word or phrase, gently repeat it silently over and over within your heart. There is no need to try to make yourself feel any particular emotion as you speak the word, words or phrase.
4. Resist the temptation to ask why this word or phrase struck you or why you've reacted to it, to force particular lessons or meanings from the words.
5. The repetition is to allow you to savour the words at the heart level, and not at the mind level. Sometimes you will find that a longer sentence or phrase has shortened itself to a single word.
6. Let God reveal the particular mystery of the word or phase and how it connects to your everyday life. Trust that God will speak to you through that word or phrase.
7. Finally, we are to express to God the impression that the words have made on you. You may want to thank God for the gifts they convey, ask the questions they have stirred up in you.

The most important thing that I think I learned last night was that I need to be quiet during times of prayer or to allow God to speak to me as I am silent. That is not to say that I am never to speak a word to God or to carry on a conversation with Him, but I also have to be willing to just remain silent and let Him speak to me.

This week I am going to focus less on how much I say to God during my prayer times and whether I have spent enough time in prayer and focus more on listening for His voice and what he has to say to me... even if all he does is rebuke me over and over.