Learning to Pray
Oct 24th, 2006 by michelle
Recently I have been feeling very distant from, not God necessarily, but Faith. I’ve been sick for a few days and before that my son had a cold, so I haven’t been to church in a while. To add to that, we are going away this weekend, so that is another weekend missed. I feel that since we started attending church regularly (Sunday, Wednesday, Saturday) my faith has remained consistently strong. And now just a few services missed, and I feel like I am “backsliding”, as evangelicals would say.
So to get myself back into the swing of things, I read the daily scripture readings for the day and was quickly touched by words that I have heard so often:
Luke 11:1-10
| 1 | Now it came to pass, as He was praying in a certain place, when He ceased, that one of His disciples said to Him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.” |
| 2 | So He said to them, “When you pray, say: Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done On earth as it is in heaven. |
| 3 | Give us day by day our daily bread. |
| 4 | And forgive us our sins, For we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And do not lead us into temptation, But deliver us from the evil one.” |
| 5 | And He said to them, “Which of you shall have a friend, and go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves; |
| 6 | ‘for a friend of mine has come to me on his journey, and I have nothing to set before him’; |
| 7 | and he will answer from within and say, ‘Do not trouble me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give to you’? |
| 8 | I say to you, though he will not rise and give to him because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence he will rise and give him as many as he needs. |
| 9 | So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. |
| 10 | For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. |
I realized that Jesus taught us to pray for times such as these, when I can’t find my own words or when I don’t even have the energy. I don’t need to feel pressured to create some profound prayer; rather, I can look to the scriptures or our little prayer book where it is written out for me. I know many people think that this style of prayer is void of passion or sincerity, but I have found that it is the best way to pray when prayer is farthest from my mind.
I will close with a prayer of comfort:
I enjoyed reading your thoughts on this. I’m in the middle of a conversation about Orthodoxy and this is one of the topics. I don’t have much personal experience yet with the prayers, but even when I pray the Scripture I stay so much more focused.
I’m glad you were able to feel reconnected through prayer. I rely a lot on my daily prayer book as well for the same reasons.
Hi Michelle,
I struggle with feeling that I should come up with my own prayers at times and feel almost that I’m being lazy by using those in my prayer book. Even today I wanted to pray for a sick family member and used the prayer for sick people. But, as I thought about it more and more, these words really do capture when I’m trying to convey and I feel so much more comfortable expressing these words than trying to fumble with ones of my own.