Practicing Prayer: A 21 Day Guide

The quarantine of 2020 had me thinking a lot about prayer.  Faced with a rapidly shifting world and the accompanying disorientation it caused, I began to find solace in my morning coffee and bible time.  While the house was typically quiet at that hour, I now found the whole world a lot quieter.  That hour or so became a lifeline to me...and I found myself less consumed with filling my brain with more good biblical knowledge and more interested in just sitting in the quiet with the Lord.  

Somehow I knew that what I needed most in those confusing days was to just be with Jesus.  And as days past and the disorientation continued I knew that the way forward to peace was through prayer.  Problem was, I suddenly found myself feeling inadequate.  The state of the world and corresponding need seemed to warrant a much more robust prayer life than I had to offer.  

Have you ever fumbled through prayer and felt no change in your anxiety?  Have you dutifully plodded through some acronym guaranteed to get you results only to realize it made your heart feel nothing?  Have you willed your mind to stay focused to no avail? Have you ever wondered why you were so bad at something so central to the Christian life?

Yeah, uh...me neither.

That year I had been spending a lot of time in historic prayers of the church.  I’d discovered that often left to my own devices I would’ve prayed for the wrong thing.  There is something very important in not just forming prayers, but being formed by them.  A few weeks into quarantine as I was studying Luke 11, I found myself standing alongside Jesus’ disciples asking him, “Lord...teach us to pray!”

I spent the next few weeks studying Jesus’ prayer in the verses that follow line by line.  I discovered that what I had previously thought was a formula was more of a posture, and as I began to see more clearly Jesus’ purpose in praying each line, I saw the way that posture made me more clearly aware of the presence of God.  It changed everything about my prayer life and I began to have a bigger vision for prayer as a spiritual discipline, as a way to live with Jesus.  I have a long way to go, but I’m excited about the journey.

Maybe you’d be interested in walking with me?

I’m going to be sharing a 21 day devotional study here on the blog called Practicing Prayer: a devotional study of Luke 11:1-4.  It’ll be less intense than some of my other bible studies(better for summer!), focused on uncovering the purpose and posture of Jesus’ prayer, and centered on actually practicing the discipline of prayer.

Bookmark the Landing Page it in your browser, add it to your homescreen, do what you do. Grab a friend or two and do it together.  Talk about what you’re learning and then apply it.  Seriously.  Pray.

And in the ancient words of Julian of Norwich, “May you see Him and seek Him and have Him and want Him.”