Since then, I set out to try praying prayers of lament.  My timing turned out to be pretty good, given events in the world.  And events in my own life.

In the process, I really found myself lamenting on two different levels.

Big Picture Lament

The first level of lament involved the bigger picture.  This bigger picture includes world events.  Events like civil wars, natural disasters, and economic downturns.  This bigger picture also includes systemic issues.  Issues of injustice, inequality, racism, and the like.

The crucial common thread in these bigger picture problems is that all of them are completely out of our individual control.  There is no decision we can make by ourselves that can fix these problems.  Our individual choices might be able to reduce our contribution to the issue.  Or, our choices might serve to alleviate some of the suffering involved.  But in the end, we cannot solve the problem all by ourselves.

Two bigger picture issues weighed particularly heavy on my heart the last few weeks.  The first is the Florida school shooting.  It is always a tragedy when this happens.  This time, I particularly hurt for the parents.  I had always thought primarily of the students, but this time I was particularly burdened for the parents.  Seventeen parents didn’t see their kids come home that day.  That breaks the heart.  And I cannot do anything to undo that day.   But I can lament.

The events in Syria also weight heavy upon my heart.  News coverage spills a lot of electronic ink debating who bombed who and telling us what the UN is trying to do.  Yet human suffering is occurring on unprecedented levels.  BBC news recently did a story that featured a little Syrian girl.  Her picture was at the top and she was quoted as saying, “At least in heaven there is food.”  True Despair.  Again, I cannot stop the fighting in Syria.  So, I lament.

Small Picture Lament

I found as I explored lament, another dimension of it emerged.  This is what I would call small picture lament.  This level of lament consists of all the hurt, pain and suffering that happens in our own lives.  In our own little worlds.  This is pain found close to home.  This is local.

Ironically, in small picture lament, we still don’t have much control.  This time the cancer strikes a family member.  This time the economic downturn causes our loved one to lose their job.  The tsunami strikes our hometown.  The effects of this suffering are felt nearby, and deeply.  And often we have no more control over these events that happen in our lives than we do the big picture events, like Syria.

Perhaps in the ultimate demonstration of God’s timing, within a week of putting up our post on lament I received some bad news.  Some events happened that could spell the end of my small business.  Nothing I did caused these events to happen.  Nothing I could have done could have prevented them.  And it is looking like there is little I can do to fix it.  Talk about hitting home.  This is time for lament.

Both Levels of Lament are Important

It is important that we as followers of Christ, lament on both levels.

Value of Big Picture Lament

Our social justice minded brothers and sisters in Christ helpfully remind us that as believers it is imperative that we know what is going on around us.  The Bible commands us to love and serve our neighbors.  Yet, if we are blissfully unaware of their needs – or even their existence – we can never fulfill the Biblical command.

One reason we avoid awareness of others, and in particular their hurts and struggles, is that we are afraid to enter their pain.  It hurts us to fully recognize others’ pain.  Especially if we are powerless to affect change.  We do not like to hurt.  We don’t want to hurt, so we tune out others who hurt.

Lament turns this thinking on its’ head.  Before lament entered the prayer tool box, we had nowhere to go with others’ suffering.  Through lament, we now have a place to take the suffering of others.  We can take it to God and process it with him.  Then we can act in whatever ways we can.

Small Picture Lament Vital Too

Like any thinking, this can be taken too far.  Some will teach we must be so concerned with others that we must never think about our own problems.  Or, that we are to utterly diminish our own problems in light of the ‘real’ struggles of others.  They will say, “How can you think about your problems like that, so many others have it worse.”

This is wrong thinking.  It is not wrong to acknowledge our emotion and feelings of powerlessness.  Even Jesus wept in front of Lazarus’ tomb.  It is wrong, however, to allow our feelings to become all consuming, to allow them to become central to our identity.  To allow them to rule.

Lament is a powerful two-sided coin when it comes to small picture hurts.  First, lament is powerful because it creates a context where we can express hurt and frustration.  We can let the emotion out, and we can be raw with God.  Peruse a few of Job’s laments, we might be surprised by what we read.

Second, lament also puts bounds on the expressed emotion.  As soon as we express the hurt and despair, we immediately shine the light of God on it.  We ask God to act.  Some else is invited to help.  A person who we openly acknowledge is loving enough, powerful enough, and wise enough to actually do something about the trouble.

We get the hurt out there but quickly fence it in.  Calls to God for help and reminders of God’s character put boundaries to the emotion.  The emotion is never allowed to overrun our lives or take over our hearts.

In the end, lament acts as a bridge from being emotionally and relationaly healthy to fully serving God.

It’s (NOT) About Time . . .

Time was a big question mark as I began my first few attempts at lament.  I knew lament was different than other forms of prayer.  Lament is not like Praise, or thanksgiving, or prayer walking.  These and many other forms of prayer are easy to put the clock to.  “I will prayer walk for 30 minutes.”  Simple and done.  But lament is more of an expression of emotion.  Thus, I was careful to not set unrealistic time goals for this type of prayer.  What I found was a very flexible way to pray.

Some Lament Was Short

I found some of my prayers of lament to be short.  That is okay.  Psalm 13 is a prayer of lament, and that Psalm contains only six verses!  King David was bothered by his circumstances, yet he found he was able to fully express his lament in six verses.  Lament does not need to be long to be helpful.

Not knowing how long I would need to lament, I planned to start my prayer block with lament, and with any time left, transition into my usual outline.  The outline presented in our post on how to pray.

I started with bigger picture issues that were weighing on my heart.  I opened my time with God and began to lament.  I explored and expressed to God my anguish over these situations in Florida and Syria.  Then I asked God to help.  I offered a few – weak – suggestions as to how he might intervene, but really I just begged him to do something.  Then I turned to recognizing his ability to do something.  I ended by praising God, which was the perfect segue to my usual outline of prayer that begins with praising God.

My first few tries at lament took only a few minutes.  Those few minutes we enough, however, to clear my mind and my heart enough to have a focused time of sitting in God’s presence conversing with him.

Sometimes We Have to Go Long

Sometimes pain hits closer to home.  At times, the suffering digs a little deeper into our being.

Like it did a few days after my first attempts at lament.  The day I heard the news I mentioned earlier.  The news that could spell the end of my business.  It only makes sense that when the bad news happens to us, the orders of hurt and frustration are many magnitudes higher.

Deeper emotion reasonably leads to longer lament.  Psalm 22 records for us a lament that is 31 verses long.  Job’ laments can run even longer.  Unsure what to expect, I sat down the day after getting this news to pray as I had before.  I planned to open my time with lament and then transition to my normal prayer habits.

This time however, the lament was different.  I really embraced the process.  I was compelled to really dig into each step of the process of lament.  I gave it to God.  I begged him to act in any one of numerous ways.  Or in ways I had not imagined.  I recognized and celebrated his attributes.

To my surprise, as I was lamenting, I suddenly heard my timer sounding.  I had spent my entire block of prayer in lament.  I was surprised I could lament that long, but that was how long it took to lift the weight that was resting on me.

Something More Important than Minutes . . .

It is important to not get caught up in how long we lament.  We learned that the length of a lament does not determine how meaningful it is.  The examples from the Scriptures teach us this, as does our experience.  Just lament as long as we need to.

What is more important to lament is honesty.  Lament cannot be meaningful if we are not honest.

The purpose of lament is to acknowledge reality, request help from God, and then be encouraged.  Encouraged because God is in control and is on the job.

If we are not honest with God, we short circuit lament.

First, dishonestly affects the quality of our relationship with God.  If we are untrue with our feelings, we are not being known by God.  We are hiding a part of ourselves.  No joy comes from fake relationships.

The second short circuit of lament is a byproduct of a fake relationship.  It is the sad fact that when presented with a difficult situation, many Christians see an opportunity to impress God with their strength or their faith, instead of seeing the situation as a time to seek help and encouragement from a loving father.  By seeing things this way, and by avoiding honesty, so many people miss out on the encouragement, hope and help to be found in God through lament.

Plants need good soil, plenty of light and water to grow.  If we want a plant to thrive, put it outside in the sun and give it some water.  Negative emotions are exactly the opposite however.  They thrive in the dark and in solitude.  When we are dishonest with God, when we hide these feelings in the closet, these feelings just grow.  They thrive.  And they eventually take over.  Being honest with God in lament puts these emotions in the light, his light.  And they are put in their proper place:  acknowledged but not in control.

We have a lot to gain by praying prayers of lament.

The post Tried It – Lament appeared first on One Year Prayer Experiment.

At the beginning, I wanted to see what would happen if I set aside thirty minutes every day, and took that time to pray.  We are now about three months in, one quarter of the way.

What I have learned or gained so far?

A More Tangible Sense of God’s Presence

A sense of the presence of God is such a subjective, intangible thing.  Many Christians fear such discussions.  We tend to prefer a God we can neatly define and categorize.  A God whose works we can neatly label.  But when we start to talk about feeling God’s presence or God’s speaking to people, we quickly grow uncomfortable.

I would often include myself in that category.  Determining the authenticity of such experiences is vital, and requires much discernment.  To simplify things, the church in large part has dismissed such experiences.  Years ago, reading medieval mystics forced me to wrestle with the reality of a tangible sense of God.  Mystics like Bernard of Clairvaux or St Theresa of Avila would describe ecstatic experiences of God.  St Theresa wrote of the time when God’s presence was so real to her, and the joy so great, that she wept for hours.  My Western, logic driven mind struggled to comprehend such an experience.

But such experiences are real.  I read the mystics’ experience.  I personally know Godly people who find great comfort in God’s presence.  And, as a new believer in junior high, I will admit I had a sense of the presence of God.  But with time, the ups and downs of life, and the sinking deeper into Christian culture – that feeling faded.

That has changed recently.  In the last few weeks, as I pray, I have started to become aware of God’s presence in a very real way.  Like Darth Vader on the Death Star when Ben Kenobi shows up, “I sense a presence . . .”

I know in my head, theologically, that God is omnipresent.  Psalm 139:7-10 clearly teaches that God is everywhere all the time when it says, “’Where shall I go from your Spirit?  Or where shall I flee from your presence?  If I ascend to heaven, you are there!  If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!  If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.”  (ESV)

So to be clear, my prayer did not cause an absent God to return to my location.  What happened is that my consistent prayer has made my heart sensitive to his presence.

I won’t mince words, this sense of God’s presence is pretty awesome.  As mentioned before, new-Christian me had a sense of God’s presence.  Over time, and life, that sense faded.  One of the things I had hoped to gain from this prayer experiment was a renewed sense of God’s presence.  And with a twinge of joy in my heart I am glad to report that it has returned.  Not that I like to agree with dastardly villains, but I am right there with Darth Vader when he finishes his sentence, “I sense a presence that I have not felt in a long time.”

More Tools In the Prayer Toolbox

Going through this year long experiment, new tools are constantly being placed in my prayer tool box.  I have discovered forms of prayer that are new to me.  Forms of prayer that have existed for many, many years – but I am only now learning about.  Forms of prayer like lament.  I am also greatly deepening my understanding of more familiar forms of prayer – like praise.

Thanks to this experiment, my prayer tool box has both new tools, and old tools that have been sharpened and tuned.

More Tools = More Flexibility

Before starting this experiment, I had one way to pray.  It was an outline taught to me years ago when I was a young Christian.  This outline is solid.  It is simple to use, easy to remember, and keeps prayer reasonably balanced.

But it was the only way I knew how to pray.  When life’s troubles were about to overwhelm me, I sat down and prayed my outline.  Learning new facts about God’s character from studying the Bible, joy welling up inside, I prayed my familiar outline.  God times or bad times, I had one basic way to pray. 

In our relationships with others, we intuitively know that different circumstances require different ways of communicating.  The way a manager will talk to an under-performing employee will differ from the way a preschool teacher will talk to his student.  The way my college football coach talked to me on the field greatly differed from how my mother spoke to me as a child.  It makes sense that different moments require different approaches.

Yet our prayer lives are often founded upon a single form of prayer – like mine has been.  By adding new forms of prayer to my experience, by adding new tools to the prayer tool box, I can now approach my conversations with God the same way most of us approach our conversations with others.  I use an outline for most of my times in prayer, the one we learned about it in our post on How to Pray, but there are times when just slogging through an outline is not the way to talk to God.  Let me give you a recent example from my own life.

A few weeks ago, I experienced a serious set back at work.  Bad enough to bring into question the continued survival of my business.  Sitting down to pray the next day, with so much pent up frustration and emotion, working through an outline was not going to happen.  Instead of stuffing the emotion and praying the outline, or skipping prayer altogether that day (and embracing the ensuing guilt), I realized this was the perfect opportunity to lament.  I spent the majority of my prayer time lamenting my situation, asking God to rescue, and praising him.  Praying a prayer of lament in that moment really set my heart right.

The next day, I was still a little bothered by my situation, but I did not want to dwell on the problems.  I decided a “praise binge” was in order.  One of my experiments was to only praise God for my entire prayer time.  This day was a great day to do that.  I just wanted to remind myself, and celebrate, how amazing God is.  So, I opened up a Psalm and prayed through it.  It was super encouraging.  It was just what I needed.

On the third day, with fear and hurt no longer swirling around inside of me, I was ready to return to my usual prayer habits.   I returned to my regular methods of daily prayer and settled back into my usual outline for regular prayer.

As we can see, it was great for me to have the tools of lament and of praise in my tool box.  Situations arose where certain forms of prayer where more fitting than others.  Knowing about these forms of prayer allowed me to use them – and have the right kind of conversation at the right time.

More Tools = More Authentic

These newfound tools have also made my prayer life feel more authentic.

Every single one of us has endured a shallow, fake relationship.  A relationship where people act like they know and care for each other, but the reality is that the relationship is shallow.  Words are exchanged, but no meaningful communication is occurring.  No one is known, and no one is being known.

These relationships live everywhere.  With our barista at the coffee shop, or with our coworkers.  Sometimes even at home.  I will even admit to them being rather common at the churches many of us attend.

The sad reality is that for many of us, our prayer life is the same way.  When we sit quietly before God, we are not interested in being honest with him, we are interested in impressing him.

When times are tough, we fell the need to impress God with our strength, or our faith.  “Everything is fine,” they tell God.  We put on our stiff upper lip.  At other times, we want to make requests to God, but instead of asking for what we actually want, we ask for what we feel we should want.  Or we ask him for what we think he will give us, since, “He would never actually give me what I wanted.”

Our time in prayer, for many of us, is our time to impress.

It should not be that way.  And putting more tools in my prayer tool box makes it easier for me to be authentic with God.  When I hurt, I lament.  When I am happy at seeing God’s hand at work, I praise him.  After recognizing his work in my life, I offer thanksgiving.  New tools make it easier to be real with God.

The post The One Year Prayer Experiment – Three Months In appeared first on One Year Prayer Experiment.

Children gassed in Syria.

I heard from the doctor today . . .

Life hurts.

Sometimes the hurt is just ‘bad.’  We can still cope with the trouble.  Our minds can create solutions to the problems.  Solutions which we then ask God to carry out.  Or sometimes demand that he does.

But there are other times when the hurt moves beyond bad.  Those times when we watch the news about Syria, or the Florida School Shooting.  Or times when we watch our own lives collapsing around us.  There are just no words.  There are no answers that we can come up with.  Events occur that we simply cannot understand, or sometimes even deal with.  These are life’s moments that bring us to the end of our rope, and we just do not know what to do.

It is in those moments that we must lament.

What is Biblical Lament?

Many of us are likely familiar with different types of prayer and their appropriate occasions.  When in need, a believer makes requests to God.  Upon seeing God provide, a believer will offer thanksgiving.  Recognizing how amazing God is when studying his attributes, praise should be forthcoming.  But, how are we to pray when life presents to us incredible pain and hurt, and no seeming way out?

This is the place for lament.  Author Michael D. Guinan defines lament as “a prayer for help coming out of pain.”

Lament is prayer, but not as most of us are used to.  It is a direct address to God, but it is a direct address to God driven by emotion.  The intellect drives much of our prayer.  We understand God’s attributes, so we praise him.  We recognize a need and its solution, then we make a request.  But pain and loss generate powerful emotions.  Lament is a form of prayer driven by these powerful feelings.  We go before God, and we tell him how we feel.  We tell him how much we hurt, we confess our uncertainty.  Then we remind ourselves how great he is.  Lament is prayer that is brutally honest.

We Need Lament

Lament has fallen by the wayside in our churches today.  For many reasons, our generation no longer remembers how to lament, and it is to our great detriment that this form of prayer has been lost.  Proper lament is healthy and vital to the growth of God’s people.

Lament Allows us to be Fully Human

We need lament because it allows us to be fully human in our walk with God.  People are not just an intellect.  We are an amazing blend of mind, emotion and will.  All of these are not always valued by believers, however.

Years ago, a large and influential ministry popularized an illustration using a train.  Fact, the truth of the Gospel, was the engine.  It provided the power to move the train forward.  Faith was the coal tender car.  It provided the engine with the fuel that it needed to propel everything forward.  Feelings were the caboose, a car that was not necessary to movement, and was to be pulled along by the other two.

I believe this illustration properly teaches the primacy of truth.  The truth of the Gospel and our faith in those truths should be central to our beliefs.  And to our lives.  Truth and faith should govern our emotions.  But, like many teachings, they can be taken too far.  Often times it is implied that as the caboose, emotions are not necessary at all.  Emotions become dismissed entirely.

This dismissal of our emotions ruins our relationship with God.  A relationship consists of knowing and being known.  If God only knows, and cares about, our will and our mind – he only knows and loves a part of us.  This is a relationship that will bring joy to no one.

Lament allows us to bring our full emotions to bear.  When they are at their greatest, the waves of hurt and fear and uncertainty can be brought out into the open and shared with our heavenly Father.  We find a caring ear.  And a glimmer of hope for help.

With out lament, we are never fully known.

Lament Allows us to Process Powerful Emotions Properly

The ups and downs of life produce many powerful emotions.  Prayers of Lament provide a process for believers to process these emotions in a way that allow us to express the emotions but then bring those feelings back in line with the character and work of God.

Proper lament, as we shall see later, is a cycle.  It is a process that begins with the expression of deep pain and hurt. Feelings are brought out into the open, instead of being bottled up or medicated with our favorite sin.  The sin, trouble or tragedy is named, often in great detail.  The situation and the pain are openly acknowledged.  There is no pretense of a stiff upper lip or of some super-Christian “everything is ok.”

Next, crucially, we remember what God is like.  We remember God’s power, that he is all-knowing, and that he is love.  We remember how he has come through for his people in the past.  It is recognized that as bad as it is to our eyes, this situation is not beyond God’s ability to work – and we acknowledge this to him.

Lastly, in recognition that the only possible source of rescue from this situation is God, we beg him to help.  After we tell God how bad it is, we ask him to fix it.  Sometimes we have suggestions for how God should intervene, but often the situation is so dire we have no request to make other than, “Help!”

It is these last two steps that make lament so healthy for Christians.  In lament we have a space in which to express our pain.  It is widely accepted that emotions need to be “let out.”  Lament allows the expression of such pain.  But these last two steps prevent the emotion from taking over, it prevents the caboose from going to the front of the train.  The feelings are acknowledged, but they are immediately put in the light of God’s character.  The circumstances – or the hurt – will not overcome us, says the truth of God’s word.  In addition, we seek help from the only one who can help.  Knowing God has promised to rescue his people in his time, hope and confidence emerge in the midst of the pain.  Through lament the caboose is acknowledged, but we also ensure it stays in the back of the train, guided by truth and trust.

In proper lament, we find expression and hope – by expressing it to the one who can do something about it.

Lament is not fun.  But it is good for us.  We need it.

Lament as an Expression of Faith

Tragedy and difficult times typically lead to feelings of despair or doubt.  Followers of Christ of fear both of these responses.  It is helpful for us however to recognize they are different – and one need not be feared.

Tragedy and suffering lead many into feelings of despair.  For the purposes of our discussion, we define despair as feelings of utter helplessness and hopelessness.  The one who has entered despair feels like all hope is lost.  Nothing can be done by anyone to remedy the situation.  “I can’t do anything to change things” they will say.  Or, “God cannot – or will not – do anything.”  People who have given in to despair have given up on God.  They do not believe he cares.  So, they run away from God when life hits the fan.

Doubt on the other hand is a totally different experience.  For our discussion, we define doubt as feelings of being unsure.  The one struggling with doubt deep down still believes God cares, and that he can do something to rescue them.  They would say, “I don’t know how, but I know God could . . .”

Since they still believe that God cares and is still powerful enough to act, they take their feelings – and their last desperate cries for deliverance – to God.  The one who is willing to lament then, is the one who still believes God cares and is active.  They would not appeal to a God they believe to be uninvolved.

Elements of Lament

Lament is not uncommon in the pages of the Bible.  The Old Testament Book of Lamentations is one long lament over the situation of Israel.  Over one-third of the Psalms are laments.  Jesus himself, in the Garden of Gethsemane, prayed a prayer of lament.

While each of these prayers are not identical in form, they do have many common elements.  Elements that we should understand if we are going to pray our own prayers of lament.

Addressed directly to God

Prayer is personal communication.  Prayers of Lament are no different.  Open by directly addressing our Heavenly Father.

The Psalmists give us great examples.  “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord!” begins Psalm 130:1.  Elsewhere, Psalm 88:1 opens with, “O Lord, God of my salvation; I cry out day and night before you.”

Ask Heartfelt Questions

Bring before the Lord our questions about what is going on around us.  These questions are not so much appeals for information as they are expressions of hurt.

The writers of the Psalms guide us again.  Psalm 13:1-2 opens with some gut wrenching, honest questioning:  “How long, O Lord?  Will you forget me forever?  How long will you hide for face from me?  How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day?  How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?”

Complaining vs Expressing

Some of us will see this call to honesty and see it as nothing more than license to complain, to whine.  This form of prayer then becomes summarily dismissed.  But I was really helped in this by the example of Job.

Job was a Godly – and blessed – man who was afflicted by the devil.  He lost his wealth, his family, everything.  Broken in spirit his words to God were eye-opening.  He was so brutally honest, but as we are told, he never crossed the line into sin.

In trying to understand how that could be, it occurred to me that there is a difference between shaking the fist at God and pointing the finger at him.

Shaking the fist at God is the reaction of someone who does not understand what is going on.  They do not know why God has not acted yet, they are frustrated, hurt and angry.  They seek help.  Desperately, they shake their fist at God.  “I don’t like this!”  “Why don’t you help us yet!”  Those who shake the fist at God are not afraid to admit their hurt or fear, but they never question God’s character or love.

Pointing the finger at God is different.  To point the finger at God is to accuse him of wrong doing.  God, you didn’t come through for me!”  “God, if you let this happen there is no way you love us.”  “God, you were wrong in this!”  See the difference?

Job was able to shake his fist at God with out ever pointing his finger at him.  We are to do the same in our lament.  Be honest, but don’t turn it into license to accuse the Almighty.

Describe the Afflictions

Tell God about the dire circumstances surrounding you.  If our troubles are coming from other people, tell God who is oppressing us and how they are doing it.  If our pains are from our own decisions, tell God about the ways we have faltered and how those choices are causing pain to enter our lives.

God is omniscient.  He knows everything.  But he still wants to hear it from us – and we need to tell him.  Whether it be sickness, relational issues, injustice, war, oppression, or our own sin, tell God about it.  Let him know what the circumstances are doing to you and how it makes you feel.

The author of Psalm 3 looks about him and is bothered by the oppression of the poor he witnesses:

“In arrogance the wicked hotly pursue the poor; let them be caught in the schemes that they have devised.  For the wicked boasts of the desires of his soul. And the one greedy for gain curses and renounces the Lord.  In the pride of his face the wicked does not seek him; all his thoughts are, ‘There is no God.’  His ways prosper at all times; your judgments are on high, out of his sight; as for all his foes, he puffs at them.  He says in his heart, ‘I shall not be moved; throughout all generations I shall not meet adversity.’” (Psalm 10:2-6, ESV)

The Psalmist sees the oppression of the poor.  It bothers him.  It bothers him to the point of lament.

Pray for deliverance

After sharing with God about the injustice and the suffering happening right before us, ask God to intervene.  Ask God to deliver.

Ask God to heal the sick, free the oppressed, punish the unjust, stop the tyrant, teach the ignorant . . . in what ever form it looks like, beg God to rescue.

As one Psalmist says, “Rescue me, O my God, from the hand of the wicked, from the grasp of the unjust and cruel man.”  (Psalm 71:4, ESV)

Express Confidence and Trust in God

After expressing our hurts, and after seeking help from the all-powerful God, we have reason for peace.  We have reason for praise – because “God’s got this!”

Praise God for his attributes, his traits that fill you with hope and confidence as you lean on him.  Remember the ways God has come through for his children in the past and praise him for those acts of deliverance.

Let our hopes and requests turn us to praise.  Just like they did for the author of Psalm 10:  “O Lord, you hear the desire of the afflicted; you will strengthen their heart; you will incline your ear to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed, so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more.” (vv.17-18, ESV)

Try it – Pray a Prayer of Lament

Unlike some of our other forms of prayer we have experimented with, lament is very situational.  It is response to a certain event or state.  Given this nature, it does not really seem appropriate to do as I have in the past.  To attempt to just lament for a week is not a good idea.

To attempt to lament every day would be forcing it.  Inauthentic lament is not life-giving, nor God honoring.

Recent events however, do give reasons to express lament.  The current and ongoing situation in Syria bothers me in my heart.  While the news reports speculate endlessly on who did what and which side was responsible for each attack, the reality is that there is human suffering occurring on a scale far beyond most American’s conception.  This is cause for lament.

No explanation is needed as to why recent events in Florida are cause for lament.  Every school shooting provides cause for lament.

So this week, as part of my ordinary prayer times, I will include a few times of lament.  I will express to God my deep pain over these events that I have no control over.  I will pray in a way that includes all of the elements described above.

To help you do the same, we have put together a short one-page PDF you can download from our Prayer Toolbox page to guide you in praying a prayer of lament.

We will give it a try and let you know how it goes.

The post Try It – Lament, Prayer for When Times Are (Really) Bad appeared first on One Year Prayer Experiment.

In the first week, we have already learned some important lessons.

Commitment Requires Adaptability

I started on this experiment with great excitement.  Eagerly I planned out my preliminary posts, and I picked November 20th as a start date.  As a typical guy however, who has no awareness of birthdates, holidays and anniversaries – I picked the week of Thanksgiving to start my experiment.

The first week of the experiment brought me an important lesson:  Be adaptable.  A fixed time and place to pray are crucial to creating a habit of prayer.  And they help sustain a habit of regular prayer.

But we cannot always control our circumstances.

I cannot always control mine.  Our family had plans to go out of town to visit family for Thanksgiving.  It was impossible to cancel our plans.  I considered pushing back the start date a week, but that is not real life.  If we are going to build consistent prayer lives, we are going to have to learn how to pray during vacations and during holidays.  So, I kept the start date, packed up the van and departed.

The smart play in this situation is to be proactive.  Get the lay of the land.  After unpacking the van and sketching out our schedule for the weekend, I knew what times were available and what places were free for me to be in.  Knowing this, I picked a new time and place to be my prayer times.  I, essentially, went through the process of selecting a consistent time and place that we talked about in a previous post.  If it will help, feel free to go to our Prayer Tool Box page and find our PDF guide to picking a place to pray.  Print it out and take it with you when you travel.

In my situation, it turned out that early morning was the best time to pray.  In a house full of kids, I find it is best to pray before they get up.  I set my alarm for 6:30 am.  With so many kids in the house, our youngest slept in the room with us.  In the mornings he is a light sleeper.  The chances of turning off an alarm, getting changed, and getting out without waking him were slim.  The place to pray became sitting up in the bed.  Normally I would not recommend this, but we must be adaptable right?  Part of adapting my prayer times to this new time and place also required a nod to bedtime.  To get up early and pray in bed meant that I had to be well rested enough to stay awake.  That meant no late nights watching cheesy holiday movies with the family.  I made sure I went to bed earlier than I usually do while on vacation.

These adaptations worked.  I managed to not miss a day of praying 30 minutes every day over the entire holiday weekend.

Praying For a Full 30 Minutes?

Thirty minutes seems like a long time to pray.  Holidays or not.

In our culture thirty minutes is a long time to do anything, much less sit still and quiet.  This thirty minutes figure I am sure intimidates many of us.  Our understanding of prayer, however, can greatly shape our view of the thirty-minute figure.

Thirty minutes is a long time to pray if all you are doing is making requests.  We pray for ourselves first, asking for our needs and desires.  Then we pray for our family.  Next we make requests for our friends.  We check our watch and see only twelve minutes have passed.  The rest of the time is then spent trying to think of everyone we have ever known or of every world situation we can think of.  That is not fun.  That is not relationship building.  This is not the experience we are after.

The outline for prayer that Jesus provides for us presents a very different idea of prayer.  We talked about Jesus’ teaching on prayer in more detail in an earlier post.  To summarize, Jesus taught us that to have a healthy and balanced prayer life, we must include five elements of prayer:  praise, justice and unity, requests and thanksgiving, confession, and protection from the enemy.

This is a picture of prayer that is not just asking God for things.  It is a picture of talking to God about several different topics in different ways.  A give and take.  Never having prayed this way, I set out faithfully to give it a try.  I hoped the variety offered by this outline would make it easier to last thirty minutes.

What I Found Trying to Pray for Thirty Minutes

To my surprise, I had no trouble making it for thirty minutes.  In fact, I found that my timer was usually going off when I was finishing confessing or starting to pray for protection.  And this is not because I am a babbler.

I had to think about why this was happening.  Then it occurred to me.  I was not just making requests, I was not sitting around desperately trying to think of things to ask for.  As I had hoped, using Jesus’ outline, I was praying for a variety of things in a variety of ways.

For many, our outline for prayer looks like this:

Make requests                 :30

Praying like that is hard, and it is not enjoyable.  But what I was beginning to experience looked more like this:

Praise                                                     :05

Justice & Unity                                      :05

Requests & Thanksgiving                   :10

Confession                                            :05

Protection                                              :05

Total                                                       :30

Thinking of prayer – and the thirty-minute figure – in this way is groundbreaking.  This method of prayer breaks that thirty minutes in smaller, more user-friendly pieces.  Pieces that are much less intimidating than the big thirty-minute number.  I am not recommending you set a series of five minute timers, but I am suggesting we think of our prayer time in this way.  It eases the intimidation of such a long time frame, and it unloads the burden of expectation.

Praying this was refreshing, and stretching at the same time.

Being Stretched in Two New Ways

Praying consistently with this new outline stretched me in other ways I did not expect.  Two of these components of Jesus’ outline have never been a consistent feature of my prayer times.  Adding them to my daily practice of prayer forced me to grow and stretch.

Praying for Justice and Unity

Jesus instructs us how to pray with his Lord’s prayer.  In it, he tells us to pray for, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”  (Matthew 6:10, ESV)  We are to pray that people here do God’s will, that they live the way he wants them to.  To put this in a nutshell, we are to pray for justice and unity.  Two crucial markers of life in the Kingdom.

I will admit, starting on this prayer experiment, I never have spent much time or effort praying for justice and unity.  I have given the practice lip service.  In times of great enough social upheaval that it makes the news I prayed for it.  When peace and calm returned, these prayers would go by the wayside.  I quickly came to realize I had a major gap in my prayer life.

Working my way through the Jesus’ outline for prayer, I came to this portion each day.  That moment was like hitting the brakes.  Not knowing what else to do, my first attempts came out vague and broad.  “Uh, Lord, please take away the injustice in the world.”  Well, it’s a start.

So as part of my time of praying for justice and unity, I went to God for help.  I admitted I was not doing very well, and asked God to start showing me more specific ways to pray for this.  God revealed to me, as the week went on, two ways.

Praying for Justice and Unity:  Pray for Peoples’ Eyes

First, God challenged me to pray for people’s eyes.  Their spiritual eyes that is.  Particularly as Americans, we have trained our eyes to tune out many of the injustices we see around us.  We have also trained our minds to dismiss them, to excuse them, or to turn it into an occasion for blame.

So, I was challenged to pray that peoples’ eyes would be opened to the injustices that surround them – my own eyes included.  I started to pray that people would start to see how people on earth are not doing God’s will, as they do in heaven.

Only two days later, my son came to me with questions about abortion.  If you want to think about a topic that is interwoven with multiple layers of injustice – that is it.  And it was great fodder for my time with prayer.

We will see what else God brings to the forefront as we continue our prayer experiment.

Praying for Justice and Unity:  Pray for Peoples’ Hearts

God challenged me in a second way to pray for justice and unity.  God challenged me to pray for peoples’ hearts.  It is one thing for people to start seeing and realizing what goes on in the world around us.  It is a totally different thing for them to care.  An incident years ago in New York City perfectly illustrates this.  A woman was attacked one night.  She screamed in the alley repeatedly, but no one came to help.  No one even alerted the authorities.  During the subsequent investigation, the police interviewed numerous people who lived nearby.  Dozens of people reported hearing the screams – but not one of them went to help or called the police.  They all knew what was going on, but none of them cared.  Or they assumed someone else was doing something about it.  Knowledge is not the antidote to apathy.

So, I began to pray that once people began to see what was going on around them, they would be moved.  That they would care.

This is clearly not the only way to pray for injustice, but it is a start.  And it is encouraging because people who see and who care – become people who act.

If we have trouble praying for justice and unity, start with these two requests.  Make sure we pray for our own eyes and hearts – not just those of others.  And then pay attention.

Praying for Protection

Praying for protection from temptation and from the enemy were also new ways to pray for me.

In his Screwtape Letters, one of C.S. Lewis’ antagonists describes the two most common errors people make in thinking about spiritual warfare and the activity of the demonic.  The first error is to see demonic attack everywhere.  Every unfortunate event that happens to us is because we are under attack.  If we don’t feel well, it’s because we are under attack.  If we are tired, it’s because we are being oppressed.  Every single temptation comes from the devil or one of his minions.  “The devil made me do it – or at least tried to make me do it” is their slogan.

The other common error is a pendulum swing in the other direction.  The error is to completely ignore the reality that there is a spiritual war raging around us.  If we are sick, it is because we spent time around sick people.  If we are tired, we are tired because we binge watched Netflix all night.  Christians in this error do not realize, or acknowledge, that they are involved in a war.  Or at the very least, they think they are a safe distance from the front lines, immune from any real danger.

I must confess that while not totally in that category, I lean toward the latter.  I will readily grant that a war is going on around us, but I never considered myself an important enough target to worry about any attack.  It was easy for me to explain away much of the negative events in my life as being the result of my own choices.  Doing so left me with the feeling of some control over my life.  If the bad in my life is due to my poor decisions, I can bring good into it by making good decisions.  Circumstances were under my control – not the enemy’s.

I also harbored a little fear about getting swallowed up in the whole spiritual warfare thing and drifting into the first category of error.  But a balanced and Biblical worldview must prevail.  There is a war going on.  The forces of the devil do not have free reign to do as they wish, but they do have some powers to attack.  Some struggle in life is due to their efforts.  Some temptations do come from their lies.  There is an enemy, and Jesus says to pray for protection from them.

So, I began to pray for this protection.  Like my experiences with praying for justice and unity, my prayers to start with are rather vague and general.  They are becoming a little more focused as I practice though.  I recognize that I have areas I struggle in.  It makes sense then to ask for extra protection from temptation in those areas.  I pray for protection for my family.  At the end of the week, it still feels a little odd, but I will press on with this.

After my first week of praying for protection, I can’t say I recognize any major changes in regards to spiritual warfare.  Many of those more practiced in spiritual warfare warn, however, to expect spiritual attack if you decide to take up arms this battle.  We will see.  And I will let you know.

A Great Start to the Experiment

The first week of the experiment is in the books.  I learned a ton.  I am being forced to grow in several different areas at once.  And that is exciting.

The post Tried It – Praying Regularly appeared first on One Year Prayer Experiment.

The first form of prayer I am going to experiment with will, however, seem rather mundane.  The first form of prayer I am going to practice is simply going to be regular, daily prayer.

I am not currently in the habit of praying daily.  I will send up a short distress call when I am stressed, or I may send up a wish list when I want something.  But daily prayer that has no other goal than relationally connecting to God is not currently a part of my life.  Step one it seems, is simply to start praying, and start the process of making it a habit.

Discipline Required

A healthy dose of self-discipline is going to be required since daily prayer is not already a habit.  I think of people who want to lose weight and get in shape.  It is really no secret what it takes to accomplish this.  A person simply needs to eat fewer calories and exercise more.  We could spend hours figuring out what exactly that looks like in our lives and create detailed plans for our fitness journey.

But, nothing about our health will change until we actually start eating less and exercising more.  Lasting change will only come about when these two things are done regularly.  Making this a part of our lives, especially in the beginning, may not feel natural.  It may not even be fun.  Over time, momentum will build and it will become easier.  It will become fun.  A habit will be formed.

The habit will not form, however, without good old self-discipline.  I wish I could spiritualize it for us.  Create some kind of formula we could work through that would instantly change our desires and make this feel natural – or more “spiritual.”  But that is just not how it is.

Make it Easier on Ourselves

So, we need to be disciplined to create a habit of prayer.  At some point we need to make the decision to pray and then just do it.  We would be prudent however, to help ourselves out and make the process as easy on us as we can.  There are two significant strategies we can use to make this process easier.

Pick a Regular Time

There is a major difference between saying, “I will work out more” and saying, “I will work out on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday at 5 AM for 30 minutes.”  One statement is a wish.  The other statement is a plan.

For a prayer life to become a habit we need a plan.  We will never “just have” or “just find” time for meaningful prayer.  We must plan it into our lives by intentionally setting aside a regular time everyday to do nothing but pray.

Stop and think about your schedule and routines.  Try to find a time in which you are consistently free.  We must find a time when we do not regularly have appointments, phone calls, or other pressing responsibilities.  You must be available to pray.  Make sure this time we are trying to set aside will be a time when other events won’t spill over into your time.  This is the classic problem with lunch time prayer.  Long meetings, working lunches, or similar things often push lunch around.  Make sure to find a time that will not be subject to the intrusion of other events.

Also, make sure to pick out a time when you can truly be “disengaged from your day.”  This means we are able to stop our mind from running in a thousand directions and are able set aside the to-do list long enough to focus on talking with our Father.  I have found it difficult when I am in work mode to slow down my mind enough to thoughtfully engage in prayer.  It has been equally difficult for me spin my mind back up to work speed some days after I pray.

Be aware of how your mind works and how your day flows.  Pick out a time and if you need to, write it in your calendar.

Pick a Regular Place

The second part of a successful prayer plan is to pick a regular place to pray.  Just like a consistent time will make forming a habit of prayer easier, so will having a consistent place.

An ideal place to pray will have several characteristics.  All of them involve reducing distraction.  The first characteristic of a great place to pray is that it is a place where you can be alone.

Whether they intend to or not, people can be a distraction.  With just their presence, people can force us to be relationally “on,” meaning we are diverting attention towards them to be able to respond to them if the need arises.  Being by ourselves allows us to completely focus on God.

The second characteristic of a great place to pray is that it is quiet.  This one sounds obvious, but it bears repeating.  Trying to formulate a praise to God while taking heads debate the news on TV is going to be tough.  Resisting the urge to sing along with the radio makes it hard to listen for God’s guidance.  A place of quiet is a place free from distraction.

A third characteristic of a great place to pray is that the place is not inherently stressful to you.  This is a more subjective trait and will vary from person to person.  But in essence, if being in a place causes you stress, it will be prudent to find a different place to pray.  For example, don’t pray in a playroom cluttered with toys if the mess stresses you out.  Or, don’t pray at your desk if you are unable to temporarily put out of your mind the pile of work sitting in front of you.

Removing the Biggest Distraction of All

Our cell phones are amazing tools.  They allow incredible amounts of productivity and connectivity.  Our phones are also incredible distractions.  With constants ringing and alerts, they demand constant attention.  In addition, the ability to respond almost instantly seems to have created the expectation that we react almost instantly to anything our phone alerts us to.  In the pursuit of a distraction free environment, I will challenge all of us to put the phones away while we pray.  Turn it off.  Leave it in the other room.  We are on a more important call.

What (I Hope) Works for Me

For me, the time that works best is going to be in the morning.  I currently wake up early in the morning and work out in my garage.  When I begin the experiment, I will get up a little earlier, perform my workout, and then settle down and pray for 30 minutes.

This time meets all the criteria for me.  I am consistently free at 5:30 am.  Meetings or appointments never happen this early for me.  The phone is not ringing and the work emails are not rolling in yet.  The kids are all still asleep.  It is quiet, and I can be free from distraction.

Some of you might ask why I don’t pray first, then work out?  If prayer is so important – a priority – it seems that I should pray first, and then work out.  The answer goes back to knowing how my mind works.  My mind does not wake up so fast in the morning.  I have tried praying first thing in the morning in the past.  What usually happens is that after I crawl out of bed and go find a place to be still and quiet, my mind just wants to go back to sleep.  So, often after trying to pray in the morning I would be double frustrated.  First, I was frustrated because I did not actually spend 30 minutes connecting to God, I just wasted 30 minutes trying to stay awake.  Secondly, I accomplished nothing, and gave up 30 minutes of sleep.  I had neither slept nor connected to God.  Lose, lose situation.

What I have found, however, is that if I get up and do a short workout, it wakes my mind and my body.  The grogginess is gone.  My mind is fresh and alert.  I am able to focus on God and give Him my full attention.  So, I work out first and then pray second because it works for me.  It may take a few tries, but with a little effort, we will all find what works for us.

For me, the place to pray is going to be in the garage.  It meets all the criteria.  In the morning I have the garage all to myself.  I have tried to come inside in the mornings,

but our youngest is a light sleeper.  There is no distraction free prayer if there is a four-year-old boy awake and wanting to play.  So, I will simply stay in the garage after I work out.

The garage is also quiet in the mornings.  And it is a place free of inherent stress.  The garage is my place to pray.

Be Adaptable

It is vital to remind ourselves as we try to pick a time and place to pray to not get married to our first chosen time and place.  There is no Biblically correct time and place to pray.  We are simply commanded to pray.  The time and place are flexible and they are up to us.

Pick a time and place.  Give it a good try of at least a week.  After a week of consistently praying at the same time and place, we will know if it is working for us or not.  Be honest in our analysis.  If our chosen time and place are not working because we are simply being undisciplined and not doing it – that is not the fault of the time or the place.  Keep at it.

We may, however, after a good try, find that our chosen time and place are not working for us.  If that is the case, reassess and pick a new time and place to pray.  The answer is not always try harder.  The point of choosing a time and place is to make it easier for us to pray.  As you can tell from my experience, I have tried several different times and places in the past.

Keep trying until you find a time and place that works for you.  Then stick with it.  Until it doesn’t.  Then pick a new time and place.  Life happens.  Circumstances change.  Just keep adapting.  Just keep praying.

How I Will Pray

To start my fledgling daily prayer habit, I am going to start by praying in the way I wrote about in my post “How to Pray.”

In that post, we read the well-known Lord’s Prayer from Matthew 6:9-13 and learned that Jesus was teaching us the essential components of a balanced and healthy prayer life:  praise, justice & unity, requests & thanks, confession, and protection from the enemy.

It is challenging, and instructive, to see how asking for things is only one part of proper prayer.  According to this outline, only one-fifth of my time in prayer should be spent running through my list.  I’ll bet that praying this way will be a lot more relational.

I am exited to start and find out.

Check out our PDF guide on choosing a time and place to place pray on our Toolbox Page.

It is a simple one-page guide that you can print out and use to help you when you are off line.

The post Praying Daily – The First Steps of Making Prayer a Habit appeared first on One Year Prayer Experiment.

I like to be prepared.  My wife would say sometimes I like to be over prepared.  The words, “Just get on with it” have been launched my way more than once.  But before I launch out on this experiment I really want to get at least a few tracks to run on as to how to pray.  I know there are many techniques and strategies for prayer out there.  Where does one begin?

To anyone who knows me, they would not be surprised that I found the answer to this one in a book.  For a question this important, I went straight to the most important book on the subject:  the Bible.

In Matthew Chapter 6, Jesus instructs his disciples with the following words:

Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.  Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.  Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.  And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.  For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.  (Matthew 6:9-15, ESV)

This is the famous Lord’s Prayer.  Many people have heard it.  Many of us have prayed it.  I prayed it almost every night as a child.  It is familiar.  It is comforting.  But what many people don’t realize is that Jesus is not here giving us a prayer to recite, but a model for prayer.  The opening words clue us in to this.  Pray then like this.  Pray this way.  I like how the New International Version translates it as “This, then, is how you should pray . . .”  Jesus gives us, in the lines of this familiar prayer, an outline to guide us in our prayer.

The Essential Elements of a Healthy Prayer Life According to Jesus

Let’s work our way through this prayer, taking a look at each part and learning what our times of prayer need to include.

“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.”

Hallowed is a word we don’t often use anymore.  As I think about it, the only time I have ever heard the word used was to refer to the hallowed halls of something or other.  The word was being used to indicate that this hall was special.  It was different from other halls.  Worthy of notice.

This usage is not far off from what Jesus is trying to teach us.  The word hallowed comes from a Greek word that means to make holy, or to set something apart as holy.  To recognize God as holy – or hallowed – is to recognize that He is something special.  To acknowledge that His name is distinct from and superior to all other names.

In prayer, this is simply praise to God.  To make hallowed his name is to praise him.  Lift him up.  Acknowledge his attributes.  Give glory to God.

Recognize however that praise is different from thanksgiving.  To give thanks to God is to express gratitude for what he has done.  “Thank you Lord for providing the money I needed to pay for the rent.”  To praise God is to extol him for who he is.  “God, you are a generous God who provides for his people exactly what they need.”

“Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

Jesus preached often about the Kingdom of God.  The Kingdom of God is the presence and rule of God.  In the kingdom, life is the way God intended it to be:  full of love, justice and peace.  The world clearly is not that way now.  This makes sense when we understand that the New Testament gives us a picture of the kingdom as one that has started, but has not yet been fully realized.  The kingdom of God has broken in to our world, but it does not yet encompass all.  The kingdom is present and it is growing.

Our prayers then need to be that the world will look increasingly like his kingdom.  We should pray that his people act more and more like citizens of this kingdom.  That his people do his will.  And we should pray that the world around us will see how we treat each other and join us in creating a place like the kingdom of God.

The prayer for the kingdom to come is where we pray for justice and unity.

“Give us this day our daily bread,”

Jesus tells us to ask for daily bread.  I need to eat to stay alive.  You probably do too.  Jesus acknowledges needs.  He knows we need food, water, heat, and shelter.  He knows we need money to pay the rent and buy medicine.  Jesus knows we have needs.  And he tells us to pray for them.  It is right to take our needs to God.

Ask God to supply what is needed.  Ask specifically.  If one needs $200 more to pay the rent, boldly pray for $200.  Pray confidently.  Wait patiently.

Before you start running through the want list with God though, we must make sure to discern between needs and wants.  A bigger TV is not a need.  Money to keep the heat on during an Upper Peninsula Michigan winter is a need.  Money to keep the cable TV going over those winter months is not.  Be discerning.  God promises to meet our needs.  He never promises to give us everything we want.  Remember, he is the sovereign God of the universe who is working out his plan.  He is not Santa Clause.

As we become practiced in praying, do not forget to recognize when God answers prayer.  I used to think God never answered many of my prayers.  Then I was given a challenge.  A mentor challenged me to write down what I prayed for and check the list every time I prayed.  Turns out, if I slowed down the rate of requests just enough to remember what I asked for, I started to see that God actually was answering prayers and working around me.  So, remember what you prayed for, and recognize the answered prayers.  Then express your gratitude.  Tell your generous Father in heaven “Thank You!”

“and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”

Jesus tells us to ask God to forgive us our debts.  He is not telling us to ask God to get us out of financial trouble.  Nor is he telling us to ask him to make our credit card bills go away.  He is talking about the personal debts we owe to him.  These debts are the debts that accrue when we sin.

Every one of us has all sinned.  We can all think about something we should have done – but did not.  We can also probably remember something we should not have done – but did anyway.  This willful sin builds up a debt between us and our Heavenly Father.  This sin does not take away our salvation.  Our relationship with God is fixed and secure because of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.  Our fellowship with God, however, our ability to connect and enjoy our relationship with God, is disrupted by this sin.

The solution to this disruption is to ask God to forgive us our debts.  It is to confess to God our sins.  To confess our sin means to openly admit what we did and agree with God that is was wrong.  Then repent – commit to turn away from that sin.  After confessing any sin we are aware of, continue to commune with God with a clear conscience.

“And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

There is a war going on around us.  We cannot always see it.  Swirling around us is a violent conflict between Satan and his demons versus the Kingdom of God.  These enemies concentrate on wreaking havoc in the lives of believers.

Jesus tells us to pray for protection.  Pray that we will not be led into temptation.  Ask God for the wisdom to recognize a trap laid by the enemy.  Ask for the courage to walk away from the trap, regardless of how inviting it looks.  Pray that you don’t fall for the lies.

Jesus tells us also to pray for deliverance.  Our enemies will not only launch temptations at us, they may try to afflict us more directly.  Ask God to shield us from the assaults of the enemy.  Pray that God will keep the enemy at bay, at a great enough distance to not be able to harm you.

Be forewarned.  If you decide to embark on a prayer challenge of your own, if you decide to try to become a person of prayer, expect the attack to come.  Know the enemy does not want you to pray.  The enemy does not want us to feel close to or connected to God.  As we try to move closer to God, expect the enemy to try to move us apart.  So, make sure to pray for protection.

A Balanced Prayer Life

We are presented with the essential elements of a balanced prayer life in the Lord’s Prayer:  praise, justice and unity, personal requests, confession, and protection from the enemy. 

This understanding of prayer is so much more diverse and engaging than my early understanding of what prayer was.  Early on, I understood prayer as only making requests to God.  Honestly, I was dumbfounded when I heard about people who prayed for hours.  How could you spend hours just asking God for things?  It made no sense to me how anyone without an iron will would be able to that.  Or even desire to.  But expanding my understanding of prayer with all these different categories changes my expectations of prayer.  Praying like this can be a much more relational experience.  It can be a much more engaging experience.

As I look to renovate my prayer life, this outline presented by Jesus will serve as the tracks I run on.  I will strive to incorporate each of these components into my daily time of prayer.  And that 30 minutes figure seems a lot less daunting when I realize I only need to pray for six minutes in each one to reach my goal!

Go to our Tool Box page and download a simple one-page guide to praying the way Jesus showed us that you can print out and use to give you tracks to run on as you pray.

The post How to Pray | Jesus’ Guide to Prayer appeared first on One Year Prayer Experiment.

It sounds like such a simple question.  The answer is often simply assumed.  But I think it is vital to clearly define what prayer is.

First of all, I am committing to doing it for 30 minutes everyday for the next year.  I need to make sure that what I spend my time doing really is prayer.  Good accountability depends on good definitions.  It is no different with prayer.  So before I pray for 182.5 hours and report back to you about it, let’s clearly define what prayer is.

Answering this question is also made difficult by the fact that there is no one passage in the Bible that clearly defines prayer.  We see the Word command us to pray, teach us how to pray and tell us about people praying.  Yet, there is nowhere in the text do we find a clear answer to the question of “what is prayer?”

We will use as a starting place the definition of prayer most people carry with them.

“Prayer is just talking to God”

The most common definition of prayer, and likely the first one in our heads, is that prayer is simply talking to God.  What I like about this definition is that it is so simple.  The practice of prayer really is summed up in that phrase – when we pray we talk to God.

This common definition however is a little bit reductionist.  It is a little one-directional.  “I” talk “to God.”  Someone else we only talk to comes to mind:  Santa Clause.  Who has ever stopped to listen to Santa Clause?  Has anyone ever asked Santa what he wanted for Christmas?  Do we know of anyone who has been encouraged by the man in red?  Or confronted by him for those acts that warrant the naughty list?  Such one-sided communication does not result in a relationship of any depth or meaning.

Aside from shallowness, the unfortunate reality seems to be that simply defining prayer as talking to God leads to two other problems.  First, practicing this definition of prayer can lead to one just rattling off our list of desires.  I do know what else to talk about, so I will just ask you for things.  That’s a prayer life that is hard to get excited about.  And one that is hard to sustain.  Especially if God is not granting all – or any – of your requests.

Second, putting this definition of prayer into practice can just lead to babbling.  We all have that friend who can talk for an hour and never talk about something substantive.  The same thing can happen with God.  Unsure what to say, but motivated, we just start talking.  God, let me tell you about my day . . . There is a time and place for processing your day with the Lord.  But words with out substance are just words.  Just like an hour with our babbling friend does not result in much of a relational connection, many words do not connect us to our Savior.

“Prayer is a conversation with God”

Bill Bright was the founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, an international parachurch ministry now known as Cru.  In many of his discipleship writings he expanded the definition of prayer.  Bill Bright said prayer is having a conversation with God.  This is a wonderful expansion of the definition of prayer.  It strongly emphasizes the relational aspect of prayer.  Prayer now becomes a two-way exchange.  We communicate to God.  God communicates to us.  We have questions.  He can answer.  We seek guidance.  He can lead.

This definition makes it okay for us to have a tough day and tell him, “Lord, I have had a tough day.  Let me tell you about it . . .”  But after we have vented to him – because it is a conversation and not a monologue – God can respond.  He may speak words of hope and encouragement into our hearts.  He might remind us of the help he offers through the Holy Spirit.  The Lord might even speak conviction into your life.

As foreign as this may seem, a beautiful give and take can occur in our times of prayer.  Through conversations with our loved ones, we truly know and become known.  Through our conversations with our heavenly master, we become known by God and we know him.

Qualifiers not useful to the definition of payer

As we expand and refine the definition of prayer, there is a strong temptation to start adding other qualifiers to the definition.  Most of these qualifiers will take the form of a “how.”  We have conversations with God “by going into our room by ourselves and closing the door,” or by getting on our knees,” and so on.  The difficulty with these types of qualifiers is that it confuses the question of “what” with the question of “how.”  These are two very different questions.  Don’t fret, the church often struggles with sorting between these two.

Communication between two spouses is a great illustration.  The goal of communication is that thoughts, feelings and desires are shared between two people.  This is the “what.”  But let’s say we decide that we can only talk to our spouse in the early morning.  And we can only share with our spouse while on our knees.  This is a rather silly example, but it clearly illustrates the idea.  A husband can obviously share with his wife while he sits on the couch with her, while they hike in the forest, or while they ride in a car together.  Defining the “what” too narrowly with too many “how’s” is a mistake.  It excludes many legitimate expressions of communication.  So, we will not burden the definition of prayer with qualifiers that amount only to technique.

Qualifiers useful to the definition of prayer

A different type of qualifier, however, can be wise to include in the definition of prayer.  A qualifier that does not define techniques, but defines heart attitudes, is prudent to include in the definition of prayer.  Back to our married couple trying to communicate.  To say that communication is, “pausing from life to give our undivided attention to the other spouse and to share thoughts feelings and desires” is a strong, clear, and flexible definition.  Again, it allows our couple to talk while at dinner, in the car, or on the couch.  But it does not allow meaningful communication to happen while the husband is engrossed in the game on TV.  It does not allow it to occur when the wife is busy trying to get dinner on the table.  There are two such heart attitudes we think are important to include in our definition of prayer.

Authenticity

The first heart attitude that is vital to include in a definition of prayer is authenticity.  Some people are not honest when they talk to others.  Be it our of fear, mistrust, insecurity or whatever, these people cannot be honest with others.  People are the same way with God.  In their hearts they say, “I really feel this way _____, but God would not approve of that.  So, I will pray like everything is ok.”  Other times, in a group that prays together, we will listen to each other pray.  Then someone will pray, and we can tell when they are not trying to communicate with God, but instead are trying to impress everyone else in the room.  The fact is, God can detect a lack of authenticity.

God knows everything.  Including what we think and what we feel.  So be honest.  Job was a stellar example.  We will take a more in depth look at him later, but what impresses us is how he managed to spend a fair amount of time shaking his fist at God – but never pointing his finger at him.  He was able to be honest with God about his tough circumstances, but he did not go straight to angry accusations.  So be real.  Inauthentic prayer is a waste of everyone’s time.  It takes an intensely relational experience and hollows it out into mere ritual.

Enter into his presence

The other heart attitude that we will add is entering into his presence.  Many of us will hear this and think of the verse where Jesus told his listeners to go in to their room and close the door and pray in secret.  Some will cry foul and accuse me of trying to go against what I just said and include a technique in my definition:  solitude.  Going off by yourself can be a great help in prayer.  Solitude greatly reduces

distractions.  Solitude is an environment where it is easy to focus on God.  But, I will admit that many times I have set aside some time to be in a place all by myself to pray – and been totally distracted.  It just happens sometimes.  Life is stressful.  Deadlines pile up at work.  We fall behind at school.  The kids.  The bills.  Sitting by myself in a room and stressing – without really talking to the one who can do something about all of it – should not count as prayer.

In the same way, I have had times in other places where I have been able to clear my mind, focus clearly on God and have a wonderful time of connection with the Father.  I have had such times of prayer pedaling away on a road bike, zooming down the freeway, and sitting in a busy coffee shop.  Given these examples, it is clear then that solitude does not automatically equal quality prayer.  The ability to calm our mind and free ourselves from distraction is the key.  This is a heart issue.  We need to be able to trust God enough with our schedule and our needs that we are able to stop charging through life long enough to quietly and calmly just be with Him.

Our definition of prayer

Having worked through all these aspects of what it means to pray, we settle upon this definition of prayer:

Prayer is entering into God’s presence and having an authentic conversation with him.

When we sit down to pray, we must enter into his presence.  We must clear our mind of worry and distractions and clearly focus on communicating with the Father.  Once in his presence, we must talk to Him – honestly and openly.  From the heart.  And we must also pause to listen to him.

This definition sounds really cool.  It sounds like if I could learn to do this, my whole experience of the Christian walk would be radically different.  This definition also sounds challenging.  This does not sound like this is something we can figure out in a few days.  But I do think it will be worth it.  I hope it is.

Finding out is really what this experiment is about.

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