Establishing a rhythm of daily prayer 1

I am inviting people to pray.  Or perhaps, more accurately, I am inviting people to learn to pray.  I think Jesus is inviting us to learn to pray. 

The disciples, good Jews one and all, and therefore men who knew about prayer got around the one they called master, who knew how to pray.  He didn’t just talk about it.  He did it.  And after a while of hanging around this man, they realised that you can know a lot about prayer, but not really know that much about prayer.  So they asked Jesus: “Teach us to pray”.

Prayer is really only learnt as we do it.  Regularly.  So it becomes part of us like breathing.  If I sound like an expert I am not.  I am like the disciples,  praying that Jesus would teach me to pray.

So here is my first offering in how to establish a rhythm of daily prayer.  Not how to learn to pray; no that comes as we pray.  But we have to start praying to learn to pray.

So suggestion number 1: start small.

Many years ago, a guy came to church, and spoke on prayer, and if I remember correctly, he suggested an hour a day, using the Lord’s prayer as a pattern.  Monday morning came, and alarm clock set an hour earlier, I spent an hour in prayer.  I think I lasted until the Wednesday, when I went back to bed after after 10 minutes.  The speaker’s book probably still sits on my bookshelves, not open since that day.

Sometime later, I read a book by John White (The Fight), and in that book he suggested praying for 15 minutes a day.  That I can do, I thought.  And I did.  The funny thing was, that 15 minutes sometimes turned into much longer and I regularly found myself praying for an hour (I was a student … a theology one at that – I didn’t have many lectures)!

So start small, with something manageable.  The amount of time really isn’t the issue.  Stilling ourselves in the presence of God is.

Tags: prayer, Rhythm