Things learned about prayer

For most of my life, I've been in a rut regarding prayer. I had high ideals, similar to the ideals a friend expressed at a Bible study last month: "I grew up with great prayer warriors as my models, so I thought if I wasn't spending an hour or more praying early every morning, I was failing."

These high ideals produced guilt, so every time I prayed, I had to do extensive confession of my failures before I could pray about anything else. Somewhere in the process of learning to be a mother of several children, I decided to give up the guilt. I realized that God wasn't withholding His blessings and grace from my life because I didn't spend hours in Bible study and prayer. Whose standards was I trying to live up to? He knew what life with small children was like. I concentrated, instead, on walking with Him moment by moment, living out what I already knew from His Word, Practicing the Presence of God.

Still, when I actually felt motivated to kneel to pray, my mind wandered. Or, I fell asleep. So, the next thing I learned was a tip from C. S. Lewis: Use the Lord's prayer as a guide.* It is my outline, if you will, while I pray. An added benefit of using His ideas instead of mine is that my focus is on my relationship with Him much more than when I come up with my own "shopping list" for praying.

Our Father who art in heaven,
Hallowed be Thy name.
Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread;
Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory.

A more recent thing I've learned: Set a modest goal. For me, this was 15 minutes a day. I reasoned that a few minutes a day, almost every day, was better than sporadic half-hours every week or two. This 15-minute goal has been an important step for me. If I neglect it in the morning, I can easily fit it in later in the day.

Prayer has become a part of my life. It is much more natural now, like eating, drinking, breathing, rather than something unnatural for me, like training for a triathlon (lol!).

The next step has grown out of my desire to pray with my children as part of the discipleship process. We pray before meals together; and when we hear of a special need of a friend or relative, we try to gather in the living room for a time of prayer. The kiddos aren't used to it, however, and they tend to distract each other or act reluctant. I hope that they pray to the Lord alone, as they read their Bibles alone, but I feel some responsibility to help them more in this area.

So, an idea occurred to me. Now, each day (when possible), I pray alone briefly with a different child. After half of month of this, I'm thankful that it's working well. What better way to spend part of our day than coming together to our Father for acknowledgment of His many blessings and of our constant need for His help. This fits well into my philosophy of home education and of keeping open relationships with each person in the family.

*I think the book by Lewis that influenced me on this topic was Letters to Malcolm. John MacArthur also wrote a book on the Lord's prayer, Alone with God: The Power and Passion of Prayer, that I read years ago and still remember. A more recent (and shorter) book I read is by Hank Hanegraaff, The Prayer of Jesus.