Prayerspeak - Week 2

How do you pray? Is prayer something you do often? Is it something you find yourself doing at church, or is it something you deliberately incorporate into your everyday life?

Brother Lawrence, a monk in 17th-century France, called prayer “the practice of the presence of God.” When we pray, we are consciously opening ourselves up to God’s presence—which is always surrounding us—and beginning a conversation.

Let’s begin our discussion on prayer by making ourselves mindful of God’s presence. In the book Rest: Living in Sabbath Simplicity, Keri Wyatt Kent says, “The ancient Jewish name for God … was actually four Hebrew vowels put together to represent the name of God (Yahweh). But because the name was so sacred, it was actually unpronounceable. Saying the four vowels one at a time, you get something like “Yahweh,” or “Yah, hey, vod, hey.” The name of God … is the sound of breathing …. Just as we are often not conscious of our breathing, we are often unaware of God. This does not negate God’s existence, anymore than our lack of attention means we have stopped breathing. Rather, both instances tell us something about our level of perception. Becoming aware of God is like becoming aware of our breathing. We simply need to be quiet and pay attention."

Let’s take some deep, deliberate breaths and recite the vowels of God’s name—not because God is somewhere else, and we need to call God back to us, but as a reminder to ourselves that we are preparing to converse with the spirit of God.

The Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13) is a template for prayer. We can read the traditional words (TNIV) or an updated paraphrase (The Message), but the ideas are the same:

• We acknowledge God’s presence.
• We express our desire for God’s vision for the world to come true.
• We ask that our needs will be met.
• We acknowledge that everyone makes mistakes—we do, and others do, too—and ask that all would find (and give) forgiveness.
• We ask not to be tempted to do what we know is wrong.

Let’s spend some time in quiet reflection, thinking about each of these components of prayer.

How can you bring about God’s vision for the world? Are there areas in your life where you could be doing more—or just doing something differently—to bring God’s desires for all people into reality?

Part of asking God for our daily bread is acknowledging that God gives us the resources for what we need. Let’s spend some time thanking God for what we have … and now let’s spend some time asking God to make us more aware of ways in which we can be better stewards of our time, our money, our personal talents, and of the earth’s resources.

When we choose to become aware of God’s love, we find ourselves called into the way of forgiveness. Is there anyone in your life who you need to forgive—to let go of the hurt, the anger, the distrust, and the uneasiness that you feel when you think about or encounter this person? Ask that God’s love would surround you and replace these negative feelings with a calm, quiet sense of peace. And is there anyone in your life who is hanging on to their own hurt or anger? Pray that they would be compelled to follow the Christ-demonstrated way of forgiveness and find peace for themselves as well.

The second-greatest commandment given by Jesus was, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Often we find ourselves behaving selfishly, without regard for others—sometimes purposefully, but often without any thought at all. Let’s take time to ask for greater awareness of how our actions affect others, and to be more mindful of ways to share God’s love.

While the Lord’s Prayer provides a good model for prayer, our prayers don’t always have to be long, complex, or structured. While it’s nice to have a template for prayer to help prompt us into conversation, we also don’t want to find ourselves scared away from short, simple, “just checking in” prayers. We can take a message from teenagers who send hundreds of text messages to their friends in the span of a week—most of which just say “hi.” Prayer is the act of saying, “Hi, God. I’m here.” Rev. Fred Rogers (yes, Mister Rogers) said that the best prayer is, "Thank you, God." Sometimes the best conversations—and the best prayers—can be short and sweet.

How will you practice the presence of God this week?