It’s been more than a little bit since I’ve posted anything here, and that’s just because I’ve been really, really busy. That happens. My journey through faith is still continuing, I just haven’t had a real opportunity to update you faithful followers. So today I want to talk about something very specific:
Prayer
Now, I’m not going to go into what I pray about, that’s between me and God. Rather I want to address how to approach prayer. When we pray, we are entering a direct dialog with God, we are going to him with our concerns, our wants, and our needs. If you find yourself confused on how to start off praying, if you’ve never really prayed before, don’t worry, Jesus himself gave us a template in Matthew 6:9-13
“9 “This, then, is how you should pray:
“‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
10 your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us today our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation,[a]
but deliver us from the evil one.[b]’”
If that reads as very familiar, it’s because most churches pray this, the Lord’s Prayer, at least once per service or mass, because it is pretty spot on. I won’t break it down for you, that’s more for something like RCIA to cover, but it is sufficient to say that if you don’t know what to pray, start here.
More directly I want to talk about how to approach prayer. Hopefully you’ve either gotten a chance to read the book or see the film “War Room”. If you haven’t I encourage you to talk the time to check it out. Now the basic premise of the “War Room” is that is brings the suggestion of having a space somewhere in your home dedicated exclusively to prayer. I fully support this, however I’ll be the first to admit I have no such space in my own home. So in order to compensate I talked with my wife and we decided instead to keep “War Journals”. The idea is the same, we write down things that we think need God’s intercession on and refer to them when we go into our times of prayer. The “War” is the spiritual warfare that we are conducting against evil in the world.
Whether or not you have a prayer room or a prayer journal, the second part is more important, and that is dedicating time to prayer. I mean DEDICATE time to prayer, not fit it in where you can, if you can. No, you need to make a decision that you are going make that time just for your relationship with God. For me, this is when I first get up, after my shower. I usually spend 5:30am to 6ish, sometimes a little after, in prayer. Its…not always easy. I struggle sometimes, but I try. We have four kids right now, three of which are little, but its important to make that time for the Lord. If they are awake, I’ll take care of their immediate needs, and then they can join me in prayer. Or they can watch cartoons in the other room. It’s a pretty even split when it happens.
So, we have our prayer, we have our things to pray on, and we have our time to pray, what else could you possibly need?
How about the mindset to start praying? Often, when we approach God, we do so with our needs as our focus. It makes sense, that’s what we want/need and that’s where our head is going to be at. But I caution you against going from this ego-centric starting point, because while God understands and respects your needs, wants, and desires, He also is looking at a much, much bigger picture. A good case in point is praying for a new job. Happens, I think, to all of us at some point. We find ourselves in a situation where we need to examine our finances and find we are falling short, not to mention we are miserable in that job so we pray “Lord, give me a new job to better pay my bills.”
So your bills aren’t getting paid, that’s legit, but are you balancing your budget properly? Are you being a good steward with your financial blessings? You should examine that before you get bent out of shape because you didn’t get that raise. You are miserable at your job so you want a new one? That’s fair, but how are you approaching your current job? Are you a good and faithful employee? Are you kind and courteous to your co-workers? Or are you acting miserable and bringing the moral of the work place down.
Often God doesn’t put us where we want to go, He puts us where we need to be. When you approach God about finances, you may not get a “new job” but rather direction on how to make ends meet by extending on your current circumstances or capitalizing on some previously unused talents.
Basically don’t get upset if you don’t get astraight answer right away. God knows what He’s got in store for you.
Lastly, as you do your personal reflection before praying, look at what it is you really need. Go to the Wedding at Cana, for instance. The servants at the wedding went to Mary, explaining they were running out of wine fast. They identified the immediate need. The thing is, that had always been the problem, they didn’t have enough wine to start with. The manager of the servants (there’s always one) should have been looking at the people coming in and if he’d done just a little math would have realized a lot sooner that they were going to need more wine. So now one person’s lack of preparation or adapting to a situation became an emergency that could have shamed a newly wedded family. When the need was identified, they turned to God.
We talked about this not long ago in RCIA and one of my instructors said that “God needs you to tell Him what you need…” and I agree with that up to about 75%. God is fully aware of the needs of his children. Christ at the wedding for instance wasn’t shocked that the wine was running out, because being God he knew. He knew before the servants knew. He knew before anyone got up that morning. God knows what you need. But before you can go to him in prayer, YOU have to know what you need. You have to examine yourself and determine where you need God’s help. That’s a big part of it because that is a humbling experience, to need something from someone else. We like to want, we hate to need. We like to say “I want a new car because this one is a little old, and the engine knocks around a bit, and I have to do an oil change and new tires and…” but we hate it when our car is smoking on the side of the road and we need the grace and mercy of someone outside ourselves. We want a new job, because it can be stressful to stretch finances and make cuts, but we hate to need a new job because our car got repossessed and we are skipping meals and dealing without light or water until the next check comes.
God knows what you need. Are you ready to talk to Him about it?
