A New Definition of Prayer
Prayer is not some practice we will one day perfect or a method we can eventually master, but instead a lifelong journey of our hearts awakening to the reality that God is with us.
With all prayer and petition, pray at all times in the Spirit… (Ephesians 6:18)
Very few Protestant pastors are satisfied with how long they pray – at least that’s what the results of a survey of 860 pastors recently revealed.
Commissioned by LifeWay Christian Resources, the study unveiled all sorts of interesting tidbits – like the fact that Lutherans and Presbyterians pray more often than other denominations, or that Pentecostal and Methodist pastors offer longer prayers in general.
The part of the survey that got the most press was the news that pastors, on average, engaged in prayer only 39 minutes a day. Reading that made me think about my husband and all the other pastors I know, and frankly, something about the whole thing just didn’t add up.
I wondered, for example, if their definition of prayer included the hours in which pastors sit slumped at their desks after having studied themselves into a stupor while waiting for God to download the heart of Sunday’s message.
Or did it count the times they spend processing with God while in the car on the way to meetings or hospital visits or the dozens of other commitments they have on any given day?
Did it take into account the phone calls that come in regularly, in which ministers find themselves silently pleading for wisdom as parishioners share crises of mammoth proportions?
Did they even ask, I wondered, how often a pastor awoke in the dead of night and lay there trying to gain perspective for hours as they whispered secretly to the Lord about the pressures of ministry?
A New Definition of Prayer
I’m not trying to be defensive here, and I don’t question the notion that pastors – and the rest of us as well – could be on our knees a whole lot more, but it seems illogical to reduce a discipline so highly personalized as prayer to a number in a survey.
This of course, is what Brother Lawrence – that 17th century Russian monk taught us so well – that prayer can never be contained in forms or rituals, for it is the practice of God’s presence in all of life.
Only in light of this definition will Biblical mandates like pray without ceasing or pray at all times in the Spirit or Give thanks in all things begin to make sense.
Prayer is not some practice we will one day perfect or a method we can eventually master, but instead a lifelong journey of our hearts awakening to the reality that God is with us. Given the kinds of chaotic lifestyles to which many of us are accustomed, what we may need more than anything are some simple ways to foster greater sensitivity to His continual presence.
Practicing His Presence
Throughout the centuries, believers have done various things in order to be more intentional about this.
Frank Laubach, a missionary to the Philippines in the early 1900’s, was captivated by the question of whether a thought of God could take place in his mind every minute. He deduced that because the human brain always contained more than one idea at a time, one of them could always be directed toward the Lord. Referring to this as ‘listening to the inner voice’ Laubach came up with the goal of asking God these two questions at least once every minute of the day:
Lord, what do You want me to say?
Lord, what do You want me to do?
I have to confess that the idea of doing this minute by minute seemed it a bit over the top the first time I read about it, but apparently the practice was picked up by thousands of people after Laubach wrote a little pamphlet called Game With Minutes in which He told of his own struggles and how he moved from failure to a modicum of success in continuously connecting with God. For him, the key was making a conscious decision and sticking with it, regardless of how long it took or how often he failed. The transformation he and others experienced through the little game as a result was profound.
Given my propensity toward legalism, I wouldn’t dare try to take on Laubach’s plan, although I’ve found asking those two questions to be a powerful way to connect with God’s heart, especially when I’m in conversation or have some free time on my hands. A friend I know makes a conscious effort to touch in with God at the beginning of every hour by setting the meeting reminder on his Palm Pilot. Some people practice the Daily Office, a spiritual discipline that incorporates reading through a liturgy from a prayer book at fixed hours from three to seven times a day.
The point simply is that having a prayerful heart doesn’t come naturally, and putting some kind of a structure or plan in place to help us along can be of great benefit.
Through the years I’ve done various things to remind me that God is with me, and that He wants to be involved in everything I do. I’ve put reminders of spiritual truths in key places like my bathroom mirror or my steering wheel or even the ceiling above my bed so it would be the first thing I see in the morning and the last thing at night. I’ve written God’s attributes on cards that I carried with me and read throughout the day. I’ve kept the car radio off for months, making a conscious effort to connect with God during that time. I’ve purposed to commune with Him – to worship or intercede or share my own needs – during household chores rather than letting my mind wander randomly.
To be honest, what these things and others have produced hasn’t looked at all like I expected it to. For one thing, there’s been a lot less talking to God and a lot more listening for His voice. More and more I have realized that while being with Christ involves sharing my thoughts, more often it means waiting and watching, and, in essence, being aware. He is the Almighty, His Spirit fills all things, and by stopping my noisy chatter, I have grown pleasantly accustomed to the mystery of what it means to serve a very present God.
This has also meant growing comfortable with silence, knowing that Christ is with me, even if He is quiet on any given day. In the same way that my husband and I can enjoy being in each other’s company without saying a word, intimacy with the Lord breeds a familiarity free of those awkward moments one feels compelled to fill with conversation.
Once I accepted that just being attentive to the presence of the Lord was in itself a form of prayer, I realized that my heart connected with His far more often than I had once thought.
Often when I teach a seminar or retreat on prayer, people want to know how long I pray each day (they usually ask how long my quiet time is). I have always felt uncomfortable with the question. The answer I want to give is that I have no idea, not because I haven’t been praying, but because I have. I want communion with Christ to be such an integral part of my daily existence that I could never assign a measurement to it. I want prayer to be life and life to be prayer, day in and day out. This kind of connecting pleases our Heavenly Father and is what our hearts yearn for most.
The above article is an excerpt from Tricia’s book, Sacred Chaos. Find it on Amazon here.
Sign Up for Product Updates
With all prayer and petition, pray at all times in the Spirit… (Ephesians 6:18)
Very few Protestant pastors are satisfied with how long they pray – at least that’s what the results of a survey of 860 pastors recently revealed.
Commissioned by LifeWay Christian Resources, the study unveiled all sorts of interesting tidbits – like the fact that Lutherans and Presbyterians pray more often than other denominations, or that Pentecostal and Methodist pastors offer longer prayers in general.
The part of the survey that got the most press was the news that pastors, on average, engaged in prayer only 39 minutes a day. Reading that made me think about my husband and all the other pastors I know, and frankly, something about the whole thing just didn’t add up.
I wondered, for example, if their definition of prayer included the hours in which pastors sit slumped at their desks after having studied themselves into a stupor while waiting for God to download the heart of Sunday’s message.
Or did it count the times they spend processing with God while in the car on the way to meetings or hospital visits or the dozens of other commitments they have on any given day?
Did it take into account the phone calls that come in regularly, in which ministers find themselves silently pleading for wisdom as parishioners share crises of mammoth proportions?
Did they even ask, I wondered, how often a pastor awoke in the dead of night and lay there trying to gain perspective for hours as they whispered secretly to the Lord about the pressures of ministry?
A New Definition of Prayer
I’m not trying to be defensive here, and I don’t question the notion that pastors – and the rest of us as well – could be on our knees a whole lot more, but it seems illogical to reduce a discipline so highly personalized as prayer to a number in a survey.
This of course, is what Brother Lawrence – that 17th century Russian monk taught us so well – that prayer can never be contained in forms or rituals, for it is the practice of God’s presence in all of life.
Only in light of this definition will Biblical mandates like pray without ceasing or pray at all times in the Spirit or Give thanks in all things begin to make sense.
Prayer is not some practice we will one day perfect or a method we can eventually master, but instead a lifelong journey of our hearts awakening to the reality that God is with us. Given the kinds of chaotic lifestyles to which many of us are accustomed, what we may need more than anything are some simple ways to foster greater sensitivity to His continual presence.
Practicing His Presence
Throughout the centuries, believers have done various things in order to be more intentional about this.
Frank Laubach, a missionary to the Philippines in the early 1900’s, was captivated by the question of whether a thought of God could take place in his mind every minute. He deduced that because the human brain always contained more than one idea at a time, one of them could always be directed toward the Lord. Referring to this as ‘listening to the inner voice’ Laubach came up with the goal of asking God these two questions at least once every minute of the day:
Lord, what do You want me to say?
Lord, what do You want me to do?
I have to confess that the idea of doing this minute by minute seemed it a bit over the top the first time I read about it, but apparently the practice was picked up by thousands of people after Laubach wrote a little pamphlet called Game With Minutes in which He told of his own struggles and how he moved from failure to a modicum of success in continuously connecting with God. For him, the key was making a conscious decision and sticking with it, regardless of how long it took or how often he failed. The transformation he and others experienced through the little game as a result was profound.
Given my propensity toward legalism, I wouldn’t dare try to take on Laubach’s plan, although I’ve found asking those two questions to be a powerful way to connect with God’s heart, especially when I’m in conversation or have some free time on my hands. A friend I know makes a conscious effort to touch in with God at the beginning of every hour by setting the meeting reminder on his Palm Pilot. Some people practice the Daily Office, a spiritual discipline that incorporates reading through a liturgy from a prayer book at fixed hours from three to seven times a day.
The point simply is that having a prayerful heart doesn’t come naturally, and putting some kind of a structure or plan in place to help us along can be of great benefit.
Through the years I’ve done various things to remind me that God is with me, and that He wants to be involved in everything I do. I’ve put reminders of spiritual truths in key places like my bathroom mirror or my steering wheel or even the ceiling above my bed so it would be the first thing I see in the morning and the last thing at night. I’ve written God’s attributes on cards that I carried with me and read throughout the day. I’ve kept the car radio off for months, making a conscious effort to connect with God during that time. I’ve purposed to commune with Him – to worship or intercede or share my own needs – during household chores rather than letting my mind wander randomly.
To be honest, what these things and others have produced hasn’t looked at all like I expected it to. For one thing, there’s been a lot less talking to God and a lot more listening for His voice. More and more I have realized that while being with Christ involves sharing my thoughts, more often it means waiting and watching, and, in essence, being aware. He is the Almighty, His Spirit fills all things, and by stopping my noisy chatter, I have grown pleasantly accustomed to the mystery of what it means to serve a very present God.
This has also meant growing comfortable with silence, knowing that Christ is with me, even if He is quiet on any given day. In the same way that my husband and I can enjoy being in each other’s company without saying a word, intimacy with the Lord breeds a familiarity free of those awkward moments one feels compelled to fill with conversation.
Once I accepted that just being attentive to the presence of the Lord was in itself a form of prayer, I realized that my heart connected with His far more often than I had once thought.
Often when I teach a seminar or retreat on prayer, people want to know how long I pray each day (they usually ask how long my quiet time is). I have always felt uncomfortable with the question. The answer I want to give is that I have no idea, not because I haven’t been praying, but because I have. I want communion with Christ to be such an integral part of my daily existence that I could never assign a measurement to it. I want prayer to be life and life to be prayer, day in and day out. This kind of connecting pleases our Heavenly Father and is what our hearts yearn for most.
The above article is an excerpt from Tricia’s book, Sacred Chaos. Find it on Amazon here.
podcast transcript
With all prayer and petition, pray at all times in the Spirit… (Ephesians 6:18)
Very few Protestant pastors are satisfied with how long they pray – at least that’s what the results of a survey of 860 pastors recently revealed.
Commissioned by LifeWay Christian Resources, the study unveiled all sorts of interesting tidbits – like the fact that Lutherans and Presbyterians pray more often than other denominations, or that Pentecostal and Methodist pastors offer longer prayers in general.
The part of the survey that got the most press was the news that pastors, on average, engaged in prayer only 39 minutes a day. Reading that made me think about my husband and all the other pastors I know, and frankly, something about the whole thing just didn’t add up.
I wondered, for example, if their definition of prayer included the hours in which pastors sit slumped at their desks after having studied themselves into a stupor while waiting for God to download the heart of Sunday’s message.
Or did it count the times they spend processing with God while in the car on the way to meetings or hospital visits or the dozens of other commitments they have on any given day?
Did it take into account the phone calls that come in regularly, in which ministers find themselves silently pleading for wisdom as parishioners share crises of mammoth proportions?
Did they even ask, I wondered, how often a pastor awoke in the dead of night and lay there trying to gain perspective for hours as they whispered secretly to the Lord about the pressures of ministry?
A New Definition of Prayer
I’m not trying to be defensive here, and I don’t question the notion that pastors – and the rest of us as well – could be on our knees a whole lot more, but it seems illogical to reduce a discipline so highly personalized as prayer to a number in a survey.
This of course, is what Brother Lawrence – that 17th century Russian monk taught us so well – that prayer can never be contained in forms or rituals, for it is the practice of God’s presence in all of life.
Only in light of this definition will Biblical mandates like pray without ceasing or pray at all times in the Spirit or Give thanks in all things begin to make sense.
Prayer is not some practice we will one day perfect or a method we can eventually master, but instead a lifelong journey of our hearts awakening to the reality that God is with us. Given the kinds of chaotic lifestyles to which many of us are accustomed, what we may need more than anything are some simple ways to foster greater sensitivity to His continual presence.
Practicing His Presence
Throughout the centuries, believers have done various things in order to be more intentional about this.
Frank Laubach, a missionary to the Philippines in the early 1900’s, was captivated by the question of whether a thought of God could take place in his mind every minute. He deduced that because the human brain always contained more than one idea at a time, one of them could always be directed toward the Lord. Referring to this as ‘listening to the inner voice’ Laubach came up with the goal of asking God these two questions at least once every minute of the day:
Lord, what do You want me to say?
Lord, what do You want me to do?
I have to confess that the idea of doing this minute by minute seemed it a bit over the top the first time I read about it, but apparently the practice was picked up by thousands of people after Laubach wrote a little pamphlet called Game With Minutes in which He told of his own struggles and how he moved from failure to a modicum of success in continuously connecting with God. For him, the key was making a conscious decision and sticking with it, regardless of how long it took or how often he failed. The transformation he and others experienced through the little game as a result was profound.
Given my propensity toward legalism, I wouldn’t dare try to take on Laubach’s plan, although I’ve found asking those two questions to be a powerful way to connect with God’s heart, especially when I’m in conversation or have some free time on my hands. A friend I know makes a conscious effort to touch in with God at the beginning of every hour by setting the meeting reminder on his Palm Pilot. Some people practice the Daily Office, a spiritual discipline that incorporates reading through a liturgy from a prayer book at fixed hours from three to seven times a day.
The point simply is that having a prayerful heart doesn’t come naturally, and putting some kind of a structure or plan in place to help us along can be of great benefit.
Through the years I’ve done various things to remind me that God is with me, and that He wants to be involved in everything I do. I’ve put reminders of spiritual truths in key places like my bathroom mirror or my steering wheel or even the ceiling above my bed so it would be the first thing I see in the morning and the last thing at night. I’ve written God’s attributes on cards that I carried with me and read throughout the day. I’ve kept the car radio off for months, making a conscious effort to connect with God during that time. I’ve purposed to commune with Him – to worship or intercede or share my own needs – during household chores rather than letting my mind wander randomly.
To be honest, what these things and others have produced hasn’t looked at all like I expected it to. For one thing, there’s been a lot less talking to God and a lot more listening for His voice. More and more I have realized that while being with Christ involves sharing my thoughts, more often it means waiting and watching, and, in essence, being aware. He is the Almighty, His Spirit fills all things, and by stopping my noisy chatter, I have grown pleasantly accustomed to the mystery of what it means to serve a very present God.
This has also meant growing comfortable with silence, knowing that Christ is with me, even if He is quiet on any given day. In the same way that my husband and I can enjoy being in each other’s company without saying a word, intimacy with the Lord breeds a familiarity free of those awkward moments one feels compelled to fill with conversation.
Once I accepted that just being attentive to the presence of the Lord was in itself a form of prayer, I realized that my heart connected with His far more often than I had once thought.
Often when I teach a seminar or retreat on prayer, people want to know how long I pray each day (they usually ask how long my quiet time is). I have always felt uncomfortable with the question. The answer I want to give is that I have no idea, not because I haven’t been praying, but because I have. I want communion with Christ to be such an integral part of my daily existence that I could never assign a measurement to it. I want prayer to be life and life to be prayer, day in and day out. This kind of connecting pleases our Heavenly Father and is what our hearts yearn for most.
The above article is an excerpt from Tricia’s book, Sacred Chaos. Find it on Amazon here.
VIDEO transcript
With all prayer and petition, pray at all times in the Spirit… (Ephesians 6:18)
Very few Protestant pastors are satisfied with how long they pray – at least that’s what the results of a survey of 860 pastors recently revealed.
Commissioned by LifeWay Christian Resources, the study unveiled all sorts of interesting tidbits – like the fact that Lutherans and Presbyterians pray more often than other denominations, or that Pentecostal and Methodist pastors offer longer prayers in general.
The part of the survey that got the most press was the news that pastors, on average, engaged in prayer only 39 minutes a day. Reading that made me think about my husband and all the other pastors I know, and frankly, something about the whole thing just didn’t add up.
I wondered, for example, if their definition of prayer included the hours in which pastors sit slumped at their desks after having studied themselves into a stupor while waiting for God to download the heart of Sunday’s message.
Or did it count the times they spend processing with God while in the car on the way to meetings or hospital visits or the dozens of other commitments they have on any given day?
Did it take into account the phone calls that come in regularly, in which ministers find themselves silently pleading for wisdom as parishioners share crises of mammoth proportions?
Did they even ask, I wondered, how often a pastor awoke in the dead of night and lay there trying to gain perspective for hours as they whispered secretly to the Lord about the pressures of ministry?
A New Definition of Prayer
I’m not trying to be defensive here, and I don’t question the notion that pastors – and the rest of us as well – could be on our knees a whole lot more, but it seems illogical to reduce a discipline so highly personalized as prayer to a number in a survey.
This of course, is what Brother Lawrence – that 17th century Russian monk taught us so well – that prayer can never be contained in forms or rituals, for it is the practice of God’s presence in all of life.
Only in light of this definition will Biblical mandates like pray without ceasing or pray at all times in the Spirit or Give thanks in all things begin to make sense.
Prayer is not some practice we will one day perfect or a method we can eventually master, but instead a lifelong journey of our hearts awakening to the reality that God is with us. Given the kinds of chaotic lifestyles to which many of us are accustomed, what we may need more than anything are some simple ways to foster greater sensitivity to His continual presence.
Practicing His Presence
Throughout the centuries, believers have done various things in order to be more intentional about this.
Frank Laubach, a missionary to the Philippines in the early 1900’s, was captivated by the question of whether a thought of God could take place in his mind every minute. He deduced that because the human brain always contained more than one idea at a time, one of them could always be directed toward the Lord. Referring to this as ‘listening to the inner voice’ Laubach came up with the goal of asking God these two questions at least once every minute of the day:
Lord, what do You want me to say?
Lord, what do You want me to do?
I have to confess that the idea of doing this minute by minute seemed it a bit over the top the first time I read about it, but apparently the practice was picked up by thousands of people after Laubach wrote a little pamphlet called Game With Minutes in which He told of his own struggles and how he moved from failure to a modicum of success in continuously connecting with God. For him, the key was making a conscious decision and sticking with it, regardless of how long it took or how often he failed. The transformation he and others experienced through the little game as a result was profound.
Given my propensity toward legalism, I wouldn’t dare try to take on Laubach’s plan, although I’ve found asking those two questions to be a powerful way to connect with God’s heart, especially when I’m in conversation or have some free time on my hands. A friend I know makes a conscious effort to touch in with God at the beginning of every hour by setting the meeting reminder on his Palm Pilot. Some people practice the Daily Office, a spiritual discipline that incorporates reading through a liturgy from a prayer book at fixed hours from three to seven times a day.
The point simply is that having a prayerful heart doesn’t come naturally, and putting some kind of a structure or plan in place to help us along can be of great benefit.
Through the years I’ve done various things to remind me that God is with me, and that He wants to be involved in everything I do. I’ve put reminders of spiritual truths in key places like my bathroom mirror or my steering wheel or even the ceiling above my bed so it would be the first thing I see in the morning and the last thing at night. I’ve written God’s attributes on cards that I carried with me and read throughout the day. I’ve kept the car radio off for months, making a conscious effort to connect with God during that time. I’ve purposed to commune with Him – to worship or intercede or share my own needs – during household chores rather than letting my mind wander randomly.
To be honest, what these things and others have produced hasn’t looked at all like I expected it to. For one thing, there’s been a lot less talking to God and a lot more listening for His voice. More and more I have realized that while being with Christ involves sharing my thoughts, more often it means waiting and watching, and, in essence, being aware. He is the Almighty, His Spirit fills all things, and by stopping my noisy chatter, I have grown pleasantly accustomed to the mystery of what it means to serve a very present God.
This has also meant growing comfortable with silence, knowing that Christ is with me, even if He is quiet on any given day. In the same way that my husband and I can enjoy being in each other’s company without saying a word, intimacy with the Lord breeds a familiarity free of those awkward moments one feels compelled to fill with conversation.
Once I accepted that just being attentive to the presence of the Lord was in itself a form of prayer, I realized that my heart connected with His far more often than I had once thought.
Often when I teach a seminar or retreat on prayer, people want to know how long I pray each day (they usually ask how long my quiet time is). I have always felt uncomfortable with the question. The answer I want to give is that I have no idea, not because I haven’t been praying, but because I have. I want communion with Christ to be such an integral part of my daily existence that I could never assign a measurement to it. I want prayer to be life and life to be prayer, day in and day out. This kind of connecting pleases our Heavenly Father and is what our hearts yearn for most.
The above article is an excerpt from Tricia’s book, Sacred Chaos. Find it on Amazon here.
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