A good friend shared with me a great prayer lesson. He said, "when I focus on God and not praying then it becomes so much easier. " It reminded me of a quote by Abraham Heschel, a jewish Rabbi, who said, "The focus of prayer is not prayer, but God." Sometimes, I forget this. When I started my one hour a day prayer discipline for Lent, I can honestly confess that I was more focused on getting the "task" of prayer done, than God. I think that much of this was symptomatic of the struggle of simply carving out an hour of time for prayer from my day. After I learned to do that I could settle more into prayer and really become focus on God and hearing God's voice.
Now at three weeks of practice, my perception is that I am somewhere in the midst of that transition. When I allow my prayer time to wind up being one hour at the end of the day, it is easy for it to feel like and become a task to be accomplished. That's really a dis-service to God. The danger here is that prayer could easily become a lifeless legalistic behavior. As I gain more insight into how to prevent that, I will share.
In the spirit of practical discipleship though I can't end this without at least one nugget of applicable help to prevent legalism. The first is--Vary your routine enough to keep from getting in a rut. A routine is a two-edged sword. On one side it helps you maintain consistency; yet on the other side you can easily become lulled into just going through motions. Varying your routine periodically will continually bring mindfulness to your actions.
Blessings to you from The Practical Disciple, John Arnold
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Monday, February 25, 2008
Praying an Hour a Day --the effects at 2 1/2 weeks
I have been praying an hour a day since Lent began and am noticing some shifts in me. Here they are after two and a half weeks:
First, a growing ability to focus. When I first started praying an hour a day my attention wandered every where. Now I am getting more adept at letting go of distractions and really entering into a time with God. I spend 20 minutes of the hour in centering prayer which is a practice of sitting quietly before God and listening. Initially, I was opening my eyes and peeking at my watch nearly every five minutes. Three days ago I was so into praying that the first time I peeked I was at my 20 minute mark! Yeah God! Thanks for bringing me some peace.
Second, night restlessness is leaving me. I have perennially been unable able to relax at the end of the day. I lay down am restless. I used to have a car that would run on after I turned the engine off. It would make this sick shuddering effort to resist turning off. That's what I feel like at the end of the day, typically. I shudder on by reading, mindlessly channel surfing, or roaming the house trying to find something to do. Prayer has been the tune-up that is alleviating my run-on engine problem. I now come to the end of the day and am ready to go to sleep. It's not that I am more tired. Frankly, I am typically tired. I just don't have layered on the fatigue the same stress causing restlessness. An hour of prayer a day is slowly bring peace into my life and freeing me to sleep.
Third, praying more outside of my hour. I do my hour in thirty minute blocks, but now I pray more frequently in my daily activity. I pray when I am walking around, doing chores, driving my car, or some other task that doesn't require much mental attention. I have always done some of that on the fly praying, but I have really noticed an increase.
Fourth, an expanding prayer vocabulary and concern. During times of free prayer I use to sometimes feel at a loss for words. Sort of an, "Okay, now what?" feeling. More and more situations I can pray about seem to present or presence themselves.
Fifth, a growing desire for and love of prayer. I have to admit that when I began praying for an hour it felt like an insurmountable discipline to maintain daily. Now though I am looking forward to it and find that I am periodically running over. The other day I lost track of time in my 25-30 minute morning prayer routine and wound up praying for 40 minutes. Furthermore, I really missed my discipline when I didn't do it this past Sunday. In case, you are unaware, the 40 days of Lent don't include Sundays. Consequently, I fore go my discipline on Sunday.
Hope you will give praying an hour a day a try.
Peace from The Practical Disciple, John
First, a growing ability to focus. When I first started praying an hour a day my attention wandered every where. Now I am getting more adept at letting go of distractions and really entering into a time with God. I spend 20 minutes of the hour in centering prayer which is a practice of sitting quietly before God and listening. Initially, I was opening my eyes and peeking at my watch nearly every five minutes. Three days ago I was so into praying that the first time I peeked I was at my 20 minute mark! Yeah God! Thanks for bringing me some peace.
Second, night restlessness is leaving me. I have perennially been unable able to relax at the end of the day. I lay down am restless. I used to have a car that would run on after I turned the engine off. It would make this sick shuddering effort to resist turning off. That's what I feel like at the end of the day, typically. I shudder on by reading, mindlessly channel surfing, or roaming the house trying to find something to do. Prayer has been the tune-up that is alleviating my run-on engine problem. I now come to the end of the day and am ready to go to sleep. It's not that I am more tired. Frankly, I am typically tired. I just don't have layered on the fatigue the same stress causing restlessness. An hour of prayer a day is slowly bring peace into my life and freeing me to sleep.
Third, praying more outside of my hour. I do my hour in thirty minute blocks, but now I pray more frequently in my daily activity. I pray when I am walking around, doing chores, driving my car, or some other task that doesn't require much mental attention. I have always done some of that on the fly praying, but I have really noticed an increase.
Fourth, an expanding prayer vocabulary and concern. During times of free prayer I use to sometimes feel at a loss for words. Sort of an, "Okay, now what?" feeling. More and more situations I can pray about seem to present or presence themselves.
Fifth, a growing desire for and love of prayer. I have to admit that when I began praying for an hour it felt like an insurmountable discipline to maintain daily. Now though I am looking forward to it and find that I am periodically running over. The other day I lost track of time in my 25-30 minute morning prayer routine and wound up praying for 40 minutes. Furthermore, I really missed my discipline when I didn't do it this past Sunday. In case, you are unaware, the 40 days of Lent don't include Sundays. Consequently, I fore go my discipline on Sunday.
Hope you will give praying an hour a day a try.
Peace from The Practical Disciple, John
Praying an Hour a Day During Lent--Difficult but Doable
I love Lent and always try to take on a commitment that is going to have a transformative effect on me. This year I adopted praying one hour a day. This one hour at first was excruciatingly difficult to carve out. I have 2 kids, a spouse, a job, and volunteer a lot of hours. I am finding out though how to do it. For those of you interested in doing an hour a day or just expanding your prayer here are some lessons I have learned thus far:
1) Break it up. I pray a half hour early in the day. And then a half hour in the evening after everyone has gone to bed.
2) Have a plan and/or guide. For the first half hour I use a historic resource, the Book of Common Prayer. Basically, the morning prayer rite in that resource is a mini-worship service. It includes prayers, scriptures to reflect on, music, and more. The bottom line it gives me an orderly, concrete way to spend the half hour and this really helps me stay focused. My thoughts tend to leap about like drunken monkeys in my head, but having an order seems to pacify the monkeys or at least hold them at bay. The second half hour I spend in roughly 10 minutes of free prayer and 20 minutes of silently sitting before God in centering prayer. Centering prayer is an old monastic tradition.
3) Withdraw if necessary. Let's face it--staying focused is hard enough without the phone ringing, kid's yelling or the television blabbing in the background. Found a spot you can go to when your home is not an option. I pray at home in down times when either everyone is gone or asleep. For those times when I can't I drive a few minutes to a hospital nearby and use it's chapel. The cool thing about the chapel is that it's open 24/7 since it is in a hospital. Virtually noone ever comes in. I also have a sit spot in nature I go to to get away. Where can you go and not be interrupted.
4) Make it the priority. Two weeks into this exprayeriment I started to journal about the need to make prayer a higher priority. I stopped though because I had this epiphany that for me to be faithful to this for 40 days, it had to not be a priority competing with other but the priority. So, now it has become my highest priority and everything else must follow. This shift in attitude has really helped.
5) Never make an exception. No matter how tired I am, sick I feel, late it is, or whatever other lame rationalization I can cook up to avoid it, I spend my hour with God anyways.
Check out my next post to find out how spending an hour a day in prayer is effecting me.
1) Break it up. I pray a half hour early in the day. And then a half hour in the evening after everyone has gone to bed.
2) Have a plan and/or guide. For the first half hour I use a historic resource, the Book of Common Prayer. Basically, the morning prayer rite in that resource is a mini-worship service. It includes prayers, scriptures to reflect on, music, and more. The bottom line it gives me an orderly, concrete way to spend the half hour and this really helps me stay focused. My thoughts tend to leap about like drunken monkeys in my head, but having an order seems to pacify the monkeys or at least hold them at bay. The second half hour I spend in roughly 10 minutes of free prayer and 20 minutes of silently sitting before God in centering prayer. Centering prayer is an old monastic tradition.
3) Withdraw if necessary. Let's face it--staying focused is hard enough without the phone ringing, kid's yelling or the television blabbing in the background. Found a spot you can go to when your home is not an option. I pray at home in down times when either everyone is gone or asleep. For those times when I can't I drive a few minutes to a hospital nearby and use it's chapel. The cool thing about the chapel is that it's open 24/7 since it is in a hospital. Virtually noone ever comes in. I also have a sit spot in nature I go to to get away. Where can you go and not be interrupted.
4) Make it the priority. Two weeks into this exprayeriment I started to journal about the need to make prayer a higher priority. I stopped though because I had this epiphany that for me to be faithful to this for 40 days, it had to not be a priority competing with other but the priority. So, now it has become my highest priority and everything else must follow. This shift in attitude has really helped.
5) Never make an exception. No matter how tired I am, sick I feel, late it is, or whatever other lame rationalization I can cook up to avoid it, I spend my hour with God anyways.
Check out my next post to find out how spending an hour a day in prayer is effecting me.
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