Prayer can be hard business. Whether it’s those mumbled
words over a meal in public or the heartfelt cries from an ER waiting room, our
prayer lives reveal so much about our relationship with God. But often prayer
gets lost in the jumble of life—we get busy, lazy, or distracted. So if you’re
stalled out and need to jumpstart your own dialogue with Jesus, here are some
tips to enliven your prayer life (even if you’re not much of a pray-er).
If You're a Reader
1. Change your perspective. One of the best ways to change
your own perspective is to see someone else’s. Dive into Patricia Raybon’s I
Told the Mountain to Move, a memoir chronicling Patricia’s life-changing
hurdles that brought her to the brink and forced her to her knees. “God seemed
a great and distant emptiness, saying nothing, doing nothing, mocking and empty
and not there,” she writes. Have you ever felt like your prayers were just
bouncing off the ceiling? Journey with Patricia to a deeper understanding of
prayer.
2. Trust the classics. Connect with God by focusing on
classic Christian texts, like The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother
Lawrence. Learn about a prayer life that grows out of a love for God: “Let us
occupy ourselves entirely in knowing God. The more we know him, the more we
will desire to know him. As love increases with knowledge, the more we know
God, the more we will truly love him. We will learn to love him equally in
times of distress or in times of great joy.”
If You're Crafty
3. Fold up your prayers. Don’t be afraid to get your hands
dirty. Prayer is not limited to the written or spoken word; we can express
ourselves to God in countless ways. One church wrote out their prayers on
pieces of origami paper, and then filled their altar with cranes as a symbolic
release of control. So grab some paper and get to folding!
4. Bring them to the cross. Whether it be by building a
wooden cross or simply taping one on the floor, experience the sweet surrender
of physically taking your requests and placing them at the foot of the cross.
5. Dissolve your worries. Grab a glass and an Alka-Seltzer
tablet. Once you drop the tablet into the water, you have until the water
finishes fizzing to get out all of your worry and confess it to God. No more
fizz—no more worry. You’ve handed it over.
6. Pray with busy hands. It’s time to buy some coloring
paper and get to praying. With the recent attention given to the meditative
benefits of adult coloring, doodling, and even knitting, there are many “new”
ways to pray. Instead of writing your prayers, draw them. Knit them. No matter
how you do it, surrender them.
If You Like Tradition
7. Pray through Scripture. Start with the Word. If you enjoy
the liturgy at your church or often identify with the reflections in Psalms,
try adopting Paul’s prayers as your own. Or, like many before you, meditate on
the Lord’s Prayer, which offers a powerful framework for interacting with God.
8. Pray through the prayers of others. Find your voice in
the echoes of other Christians. Read how Cindy Crosby discovered that through
praying the prayers of Saint Patrick and other ancient Christians she was able
to re-establish a framework for her own struggling prayer life. For other
prayers to model, check out The Online Book of Common Prayer and A Collection
of Puritan Prayers and Devotions.
If You're Tech Savvy
9. App it up. Don’t put down your phone just yet. Pray! acts
as a calendar app to record your requests and remind you throughout the day to
bring these requests to God. Another app, Prayer Prompter, is great for those
of us with shorter-than-average attention spans. Use this app if you need a
series of prompts (“your family,” “worship,” “confession,” “your spouse”) to
guide you through prayer with additional suggested passages to pray through for
those days when your words just run out.
10. Go global. Are you praying in a bubble? Having that
global focus often feels impossible, so work on expanding your prayers outside
your small circle. Check out Prayercast, a ministry out of One Way. Prayercast
provides you with a summary of countries with specific ways to pray for each
place. Praying for places and movements so much greater than ourselves helps
remind us of how big and awesome God is.
Prayer can be tricky, but it is also incredibly rewarding.
While prayer is meant to bring us closer to God and align our hearts with his,
it is also meant to grow us as people. So while you look over this list, I
encourage you to try a few suggestions that you’re naturally drawn to, but
spend time this week also experimenting with a few that seem outside of your
comfort zone. You never know what some colored pencils or an Alka-Seltzer tab
could teach you about God.
Written by Joy Beth Smith
Joy Beth Smith is the assistant editor for Today's Christian
Woman. You can follow her on Twitter at @JBsTwoCents or Instagram at
@jbstwocents or on her website JoyBethSmith.com.
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