How (Not) To Pray

"Pray as you can, not as you can't"

How do you pray?  Is your prayer life growing or do you find yourself asking for the same things over and over?  Jesus gave a warning concerning vain repetition.  Are our prayers more focused on our needs or on others? 

Are you being changed by prayer?  Do your prayers take you to the throne room of God or does it seem like your prayers are barely getting past the ceiling?  When it comes to prayer, the first thing we need to understand is we do not know how to pray.  The secret of prayer is the more we pray, the more we know we don't know how to pray!

Prayer is not so much telling God what we think but its God telling us what God thinks (God's thoughts) and therefore praying them back to God.  Prayer is not a wrestling match to get God to do something but its surrender to the Holy Spirit to get us to do something for God.  So when it comes to prayer, here are some prayer exercises to help us along the prayer journey.

1.  Pray with your mind and pray in the Spirit.  The mind prepares us and gets us ready to listen and hear from God.  Prayer in the Spirit is listening to God's heartbeats, God's emotions, God's voice speaking to our conscience.  When we cease our activity, God often begins to speak to us through the silence.  For some, praying in the Spirit may also be speaking a prayer language.  An unknown tongue which is like God's prayer language with unconscious words of our mind or the deep stirrings from our own spirit.  The only way we know what these words mean is unless the Spirit of God interprets them for us.

2.  Pray with your emotions and pray in silence.  We think everything must begin with words and ends with words.  Sometimes the best prayers are saying nothing and simply letting your unspoken emotions pour out to God and then God pours his emotions and peace and love back into us.  Pray and if necessary, use words.

3.  Pray with your heart and pray with your gut (intuitions).  The heart is the seat of your emotions and your gut instincts is often where your inner most spirit speaks to God's spirit.  The heart is what God desires most from us where we give God our utmost love and attention.  Our gut or intuitions is often where the Holy Spirit nudges us gently and quietly to do things and go to places we would never choose on our own accord.

4.  Pray with images and pray with icons.  One of the ways we can enter into God's presence through prayer is by our visual senses.  A picture or image can paint a thousand words.  A Picture or an image of being in heaven and worshiping God with God's angelic army can bring tremendous strength and peace.  The Puritans said the only way to make it through the day was to spend at least 20 to 30 minutes a day in heaven.  Picture yourself around the throne of God in heaven worshipping with all the angels.  Also praying with the use of icons can help us focus on Christ and his earthly and heavenly life.  Pictures can help us center our attention on the cross of Christ and the resurrected life God wants us to live.

5.  Pray with your imagination and pray with your soul.  God created us to have a sanctified imagination.  Imagine sitting in Father God's lap.  Imagine Jesus running to you and hugging and holding you.  Imagine your soul taking flight like an eagle circling the heavens by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Our soul's only comfort, only solace, only refuge is found in God.  Our inner soul is our love and heartbeat for God.

6.  Pray with the Scriptures and pray with the Psalms.  When people are unsure of their prayer life, the best way to be sure is pray God's Word.  The Apostle Paul's letters have prayers that can be prayed.  Personalize them and pray these prayers for yourself and others.  Notice Paul's prayers do not end in Jesus name.  We pray about all kinds of things that have nothing to do with Jesus and then end our prayers "in Jesus name."  Paul's prayers are about Jesus and somehow this is more what it means to pray in Jesus name than simply tagging the the end of our prayers with this phrase.  The Psalms is the church's prayer book.  Pray the Psalms with others but pray them.  Sing them, meditate on them and read them out loud as your own prayers.  Every emotion you feel is in the Psalms so pray.

7.  Pray with the Saints and pray the Jesus Prayer.  Read how other Christians have prayed through the ages.  Read the early church fathers prayers, the Christian mystics prayers, the dessert fathers and mothers prayers, the puritans prayers and the prayers of monks, nuns, hermits, poets, and any other lover of God.  Pray the prayer of Saint Francis and pray one of the oldest prayers of Christians through the centuries and that is pray the Jesus Prayer, "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me."  Pray it slowly, pray it often, pray it from the heart.  Focus on each word and pray each word as a prayer to God. Pray this with such passion and conviction that it changes you.