Life of Prayer

Prayer is the assumed foundation for a life of faith, assumed so completely that sometimes we learn a lot about faith (for better or worse), but have little competency at actually praying. It is like the social skill of conversation: it's not the only way to make contact with people, nor is it always exactly what is necessary, but it is difficult to imagine a relationship of real depth and understanding that does not have a good bit of it happening regularly. We all have conversations, but we are not all great conversationalists. The good news is that carrying on great conversations is a learnable skill, and the great news is that this also applies to prayer.

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Jesus' disciples knew that they needed to know how to pray, and he knew it too. So, they asked him and he taught them a simple form for powerful prayer.

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Read Luke 11:1-13 and Matthew 6:5-15

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To begin growing a life of prayer, simply learn from Jesus:

1. Commit the Lord's Prayer to memory (Mt. 6:9b-13 is the standard version)

2. Begin to pray that prayer every day, even multiple times per day

3. Let this pray become a kind of trellis from which to grow your life of prayer:

   1. Read/pray one line or phrase​

   2. Briefly meditate on that line/phrase

   3. Speak to God from your own words as that line/phrase helps you

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The next steps of growing in your conversational competency with God:

• The Psalms is the prayer book of the Bible. Read and pray the Psalms daily. Learn from them the heart language of prayer.

  • It may help you to use a Psalm in a similar fashion as the Lord's Prayer: read/pray a line or verse or two, meditate upon it and then pray with your own words in response.​

  • Memorize Psalms to become part or your regular prayer life; eg, Psalm 1, 23, 100, 103
     

• Create space to listen to God during your prayer times. This begins with that moment of meditation after reading/praying a line from the Lord's Prayer or a Psalm, but don't stop there. Build your capacity for quietly listening for God over time. You can insert it into a dedicated time of prayer, or create a special time during the day or week to simply practice listening. Be creative.
   

• You can also adopt or create a more elaborate prayer trellis utilizing prayers from the Bible, especially from Jesus and the Psalms, other scriptures, prayers and/or creeds from the Church or written prayers of your own. You can intersperse quiet, songs or other elements into your trellis.​

  • Feel free to bring questions about this to the staff, as this module (intentionally) does not go in depth on the idea of the trellis. However, here is a brief post to get a little more info.​

  • Here are two examples from Pastor Brian Zahnd: Morning Prayer Liturgy, Evening Prayer Liturgy

 

To complete this module…

• Watch/listen to the first six episodes of our Prayer Podcast to explore the Lord's Prayer

• Complete the Doers practical application steps below

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Going Deeper: Read this article to catch a vision for what a life of prayer truly could become, along with a couple of practical notes.

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