Encouraging - Prayer

If you are not praying, then you are quietly confident that time, money, and talent are all you need in life. You’ll always be a little too tired, a little too busy. But if, like Jesus, you realize you can’t do life on your own, then no matter how busy, no matter how tired you are, you will find the time to pray….

If we think we can do life on our own, we will not take prayer seriously. Our failure to pray will always feel like something else –a lack of discipline or too many obligations. But when something in important to us, we make room for it. Prayer is simply not important to many Christians because Jesus is already an add-on. That is why, as we’ll see later, suffering is so important to the process of learning how to pray. It is God’s gift to us to show us what life is really like.

Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life, (NavPress, Colorado Springs, CO: 2009), 49, 59.

Encouraging - Cynicism

Cynicism begins with the wry assurance that everyone has an angle. Behind every silver lining is a cloud. The cynic is always observing, critiquing, but never engaged, loving and hoping. R. R. Reno, a Catholic scholar, called cynicism a perverse version of “being in the world but not of the world.”…Yoani Sanchez, a thirty-two year old Cuban blogger and leading spokesperson for her generation, wrote, “Unlike our parents, we never believed in anything. Our defining characteristic is cynicism. But that’s a double-edged sword. It protects you from crushing disappointment, but it paralyzes you from doing anything.”

A praying life is just the opposite. It engages evil. It doesn’t take no for an answer. The psalmist was in God’s face, hoping, dreaming, asking. Prayer is feisty. Cynicism, on the other hand, merely critiques. It is passive, cocooning itself from the passions of the great cosmic battle we are engaged in. It is without hope.

Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life, (NavPress, Colorado Springs, CO: 2009), 79.

Encouraging - Busyness

If we love people and have the power to help, then we are going to be busy. Learning to pray doesn’t offer us a less busy life; it offers us a less busy heart. In the midst of outer busyness we can develop an inner quiet. Because we are less hectic on the inside, we have a greater capacity to love…and thus to be busy, which in turn drives us even more into a life of prayer. By spending time with our Father in prayer, we integrate our lives with his, with what he is doing in us. Our lives become more coherent. They feel calmer, more ordered, even in the midst of confusion and pressure.

Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life, (NavPress, Colorado Springs, CO: 2009), 23.

Encouraging - St. Theresa's Prayer

May today there be peace within.
May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.
May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith.
May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you.
May you be content knowing you are a child of God.
Let this presence settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love. It it there for each and every one of us.

Encouraging - God's Presence

All Christians want to know God in a close, personal way, but often this desire is not fulfilled. We frequently hear believers say, “God never seems close to me. Is He really listening to my prayers?” We lack assurance that God is intimately concerned with us. Yet, followers of Christ are never satisfied to stay in this condition for long. A husband and wife who are in a happy marriage can be separated for a time, but soon they will begin to miss each other. The same is true of believers and their God. From time to time we manage without a sense of God’s nearness, but a continuation of that state is unsatisfying. True believers yearn to be close to God and to feel the assurance of his personal attention.

Richard L Pratt Jr., Pray With Your Eyes Open: Looking at God, Ourselves, and Our Prayers (P & R Publishing Company, Phillipsburg, NJ: 1987) p. 55.

Encouraging - Names of God

Similarly, one of the first steps toward renewing our attention to God is to address Him with variety. Variation creates new interest in God. For instance, thinking about Him as the “Exalted King,” “Master of the Universe,” “Giver of Life,” or “Mighty Fortress” immediately stirs our hearts. Unusual ways of calling on God evoke all sorts of concepts and attitudes. They help us focus more clearly on who God is and what He does for us. Consider…the many titles given to Jesus in the Old and New Testaments:

“Righteous Judge” (2 Tim 4:8)
“Head of the Church” (cf. Eph 1:22)
“Firstborn of creation” (cf. Col 1:15)
“Firstborn among many brothers” (Rom 8:29)
“King of Kings” (Rev 19:16)
“Morning Star” (Rev 22:16)
“Advocate” (cf. 1 John 2:1)
“Word of Life” (1 John 1:1)
“Alpha and Omega” (cf. Rev 1:8)
“Chief Cornerstone” (Eph 2:20)
“Prince of Peace” (Isa 9:6)
“Lamb of God” (John 1:29)
“Resurrection and Life” (cf. John 11:25)

Sadly, we seldom hear these titles of Christ used in prayer. Yet, each of them is packed full of powerful significance that draws us toward Him.

Richard L Pratt Jr., Pray With Your Eyes Open: Looking at God, Ourselves, and Our Prayers (P & R Publishing Company, Phillipsburg, NJ: 1987) p. 22.

Encouraging - Shopping List

This neglect of God reveals a basic misunderstanding about prayer. We often treat prayer like a spiritual shopping list. We walk into God’s general store, give a perfunctory nod in His direction, and then proceed to the real reason we came – the grocery list. We spend the bulk of our time listing one request after another, and God Himself takes second place. In fact, this habit of ignoring God suggests that we would prefer to find Him absent from the store so we would not have to bother with Him at all. How easy it is to forget that we are dealing with a divine Person, not a heavenly mail-order catalog. When we focus too much on what we need, we are bound to neglect the One whom we need.

Richard L Pratt Jr., Pray With Your Eyes Open: Looking at God, Ourselves, and Our Prayers (P & R Publishing Company, Phillipsburg, NJ: 1987) p. 20.

Enouraging - Prayer

O give me, Lord, the tender heart
That trembles at the approach of sin;
A godly fear of sin impart,
Implant and root it deep within,
That I may dred Thy gracious power
And never dare offend Thee more.

...Charles Wesley

Encouraging - Prayer

A prayer from Charles de Foucald...

Father, I abandon myself into your hands;
Do with me what you will.
Whatever you may do, I thank you;
I am ready for all; I accept all.
Let only your will be done in me,
And in all your creatures
I wish no more than this, O Lord.
For you are my Father.
Into your hands I commend my soul;
I offer it to you with all the love of my heart,
for I love you, Lord,
and so need to give myself,
to surrender myself into your hands,
without reserve
and with boundless condfidence.