Now prayer may seem like one of those no-brainer disciplines that needs no explaining. I mean, it's really just a conversation with God, and if you don't know how to have a conversation, then you're probably a robot, or a rabbit, or something. However, there is more to this discipline of prayer than meets the eye. You may have certain assumptions about prayer that aren't exactly true. As with any spiritual discipline there are new things to learn no matter how familiar we are with the subject. There are ways to cultivate our knowledge and practice to become more effective and skillful pray-ers.
An important note to make on the subject of prayer is simply the power and effectiveness of it. Something I have struggled with in the past is wondering what the purpose of prayer is when God has already ordained everything that is going to happen. If I pray for someone to be healed, I assumed it was already in His will whether or not that would happen. Honestly, I'm still not sure how this works, but the Bible explicitly describes the powerful role that prayer has played in history. God invites us to change the world by prayer.
I thought, as many of you may have, that I understood the general principle of prayer and that there was really no need for me to exercise this discipline. But as it turned out, the way I pray--with basically no direction, just casting random wants and needs out to God--is not how I should generally be praying (not to say I can't ever go about it this way--sometimes it a "heaven help me!" kind of day.) And so this week I set aside a purposeful time of prayer. In Foster's Celebration of Disciplne he describes a kind of praying called "swishing prayers." This kind of praying basically involves saying small prayers for people as you see them. I sat in a part of school with a little traffic and did simply that: prayed for people as they passed. These prayers were pretty general seeing as I don't know the personal junk that each person contained under the surface. It was certainly an interesting experience--one that I enjoyed surprisingly. Out of this entire study and experience I have become more aware of the constant presence of God as well as the constant opportunity we have to go to him in prayer.
Well, that's all I got! Until next time!
I love the title you gave to prayer. It is like you said, classy and original. I also really appreciate your thoughts on prayer. Like you, I thought that I had this discipline down. However, my prayers seem to be without much direction too. I think that the invitation to help change history through prayer is exciting and awesome, but like you, I struggle with what that looks like. Also, you took a totally different approach to this discipline than I did. I love that! So happy I get to be reading your blogs! Love, Steph :)
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