Build Intimacy with Adoration

Few things build intimacy in a relationship more quickly than telling someone, "I love you" and then letting them know why. This is equally true in our relationship with God. Most people have little or no problem offering thanks to God, but some seem to struggle with just adoring God for who God is. That was certainly my story until a couple of years ago. A shift for me occurred one day when I was reading Psalm 18. It offered me a pattern for adoring God. A pattern that was easy to apply.

First, David simply said to God, "I love You." Stop and think about how very simple that is, but when have you last given God a heart felt, "I love You!"

Then in the Psalm David spends a good bit of time just recognizing God for who God is. You can do this saying things like--"God you are my Rock, my Refuge, and my sure and certain hope. You are my friend, my provider, my Savior. You are everything to me. You are powerful and you are mighty. You are steadfast in your love and forgiving."

A third form of adoration you will find in Psalm 18, is simply recognizing what God has done. In your life it might look something like this--"God you have lifted me up when I was feeling hopeless. You have provided for me at every turn. Sometimes even before I realized my own need. You have given me a great family, a great job, and a wonderful church. God you have..."

It's that simple. "God I love you. You are.... and You have..."

Take some prayer time now and just adore God for who God is and what God has done in your life. Doing so brought a greater closeness and intimacy into my relationship with my Creator than I would have ever anticipated. Others who have tried this simple three-fold path of praise have reported similar results. Blessings to you.

When there are no words...

It's 12:48 a.m. as I write this. I have no words for prayer. A few hours ago I received an e-mail. A young man name Charlie died yesterday. He was 24. His mother, Peggy, is a friend of mine and a pastor. I pray for the family, but then words seems so hallow and inadequate. The loss, shock and sympathy I feel for my friend leaves me numb. I am bifurcated between pain and peace. Pain for my friend and her family. Pain for the 16 months of battling cancer. Pain for not being able to imagine losing my child. Peace because I know the family. Peace because I know they know God. Peace because Easter is coming. Peace because there is good news. Peace because in the stillness God moves. The Psalmist said, "Be still and Know that I am God." Perhaps, those words were for hours like these. When nearly 1:00 a.m. with news of loss feels like nearly eternity and where 24 years seems not nearly enough.

I light a candle and just sit in silence with God and let his peace quietly flow. 1:00 a.m. is a dark time, a quiet time, a lonely time, but the sun is coming. So I light a candle in the dark and wait in silence. Some times thats what you have to do. The darkness is at hand. The hour is lonely. Light a candle. Dawn is coming. Easter is coming. Wait with a lit candle in the darkness and know that God is God. My candle burns here for Peggy and her family. In a way, perhaps I am a candle in doing so.

In your prayers you can be a candle as well for those who are in the dark. You can be that bit of light pushing back the darkness until the dawn comes. Prayer for and with those in the dark. Light a candle. Be a candle.

Peace to you from within that deep dark that precedes the dawn,
The Practical Disciple, John

Daily Inventory Keeps You Consistent

Recently, I was reading an article on physical fitness and it mentioned that the most effective tool to enhance your performance was simply tracking your activity in a journal. This is equally true for our spiritual health. Since the beginning of the year I have been striving to be a blessing to others. Every day I journal and I try to always include a few notes of who I have been a blessing to and also the missed opportunities. This simple activity of listing keeps me ever aware. A prayer list, scripture list or list of acts of kindness can be an amazing shot in the arm for any spiritual discipline. One tip to keep in my mind when keeping a journal-- commit to never missing an entry. Even if you do nothing that day, write down you did nothing.

Growth Progression in Prayer

Today in worship I shared with members of our church the story of one young man's progression of growth in prayer. Below is a very abbreviate description of the progression he experienced.

1. Doubt---He began with doubt. Through listening to many stories on answered prayer his curiosity began to peak and he started to recognize God answering prayers.
2. Curiosity/Exploration and Work--He then looked for tools and I offered to him an A.C.T.S. prayer as one guide to expand his prayer vocabulary. A.C.T.S. stands for Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication. He started practicing the ACTS prayer.
3. Hitting Walls--As he started to grow spiritually, it created internal conflict. He experienced a painful period of questioning his faith tradition.
   
4. Service--Once he reconciled the internal conflict he was experiencing, he found himself wanting to teach others to serve and prayer with his newly integrated knowledge.
5. Leadership--Overtime he actually learned to exercise leadership in prayer.
   
6. Wisdom--Through the practice of leadership he came to possess not just a depth of knowledge in prayer but the wisdom to rightly discern the need and use of prayer.
7. Full integration--He eventually came to have a body felt sense of the spiritual. He could feel when people were praying for him. Or felt unrest when spiritually a situation was out of balance.

This progression of learning is not only a normative sequence for prayer but of essentially anything else we learn. In the days to come I will unpack these pieces more clearly.

Remembering that Prayer is about God

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

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

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.