Spiritual Discipline: Prayer – Six tips for talking to God.

As it’s already been stated, Bible reading and prayer are the two most basic spiritual disciplines of Christian faith. Prayer in the simplest way is talking to God. It is sharing with your loving Father your heart, thoughts, emotions, requests, needs, cares, anxieties, worries, praises, thanksgivings, hopes, and desires. The list could go on for days. God speaks to you through His Word and you speak to Him through prayer. Here are some simple tips and steps for developing a discipline of prayer.
Tip #1: Set up “triggers” in your life. We talked about triggers last week. Take things that you do everyday and make them triggers for you to pray. Here are some ideas to help you get started: taking a shower, using the bathroom, getting in your car, making coffee, getting in bed, getting ready to read your Bible, finishing reading your Bible, driving to work, driving home, finishing lunch, eating eggs, sailing on a boat, scratching your nose, and buying a tambourine. You get the idea. Take things that you do everyday and use them as a trigger to pray.
Tip #2: Have a plan. If you don’t have a plan, you can easily become a random prayer. Whatever comes to your head at the time is what you will pray for. You will constantly be praying for the same things over and over. This isn’t necessarily bad, but there are a lot more things/people in your life that could be praying for. So have a standard place where you keep track of all the things that you want to pray about. Then review this list at least once a day. This way nothing gets left behind.
Tip #3: Talk to God. This might sound dumb to some, but for others this will be an epiphany. I don’t know if you noticed this or not, but some people like to use what could be called “prayer talk.” This is where a person suddenly embodies the spirit of a TV evangelist and sees how many times they can say the words God, Father God, Lord, or Jesus (whichever is the persons favorite) in a prayer. It comes as a surprise to most that you can actually just talk to God. You don’t have to use His name as the punctuation to every sentence. You don’t have to speak in old English. You can just talk to Him. Just like you talk to your friends about your troubles and your successes, you can talk to Him. You can tell Him your struggles and failures. You can tell Him jokes. You can even be angry and cry out to Him (read a few Psalms and you’ll get the idea). Prayer is you simply talking to God. No flair. No technicalities. No special formulas. Just talking.
Tip #4: Write it down. When you develop a habit of constantly praying, it becomes easy to forget what you’ve prayed about. Therefore, you can lose track of whether or not God has answered your prayers. This is so you can look back and see how God has answered your prayers over time. Keep it simple though. Don’t set a limit. That means no minimum or maximum. It puts an unnecessary burden on you. Some days you will write pages worth of prayer to God. Other days it will be the simple phrase, “God help me.” The idea is to simply write it out.
Tip #5: Keep it simple. During the time of Jesus, Jews would have standard prayers for everything that they would do. You would have a standard prayer for plowing a field, eating a meal, drinking wine…even going to the bathroom.[i] The key was that most of these prayers were only a sentence long. The reality is that our prayers don’t have to be five minutes long for God to hear us. Sometimes the simplest prayers are the best prayers. If you can only think of a few things to say to God, then say them. God isn’t keeping a tally of how much you pray. He just wants to hear from you.
Tip #6: Keep it sweet. Remember whom you are talking to. While God is the King of the Universe, He is also the Lover of your soul. One of the reasons that David was a man after God’s own heart was because he was passionate and honest with God. He was open and honest as you can only be with a closest friend. The worst prayer isn’t a long prayer or a prayer said in Old English but a prayer that has no heart. If you aren’t praying out of a love for God, then are you really praying? The reality is that this is the core of all prayer…to seek the face of God….to seek after His heart. Prayer is one of the most intimate times we have with God. Treat it that way.
[i] Marvin R. Wilson, Our Father Abraham: Jewish Roots of the Christian Faith
At least God knows what He’s doing… Part 5
The following is part 5 of a 5 part series. Go here for Part 1
I started to head to the security check point that I came through the first time about 500 feet down the hallway. My mind was racing.
I remember putting it in my back pocket. Maybe it fell out when I sat down at Starbucks. Maybe it’s in the men’s restroom. How the hell am I going to get it back? Their not going to let me in and I’m going to be stuck in Seattle for ever. I don’t want to be stuck in Seattle I just want to home and see Shannon.
“Excuse me sir…I think I might have left my driver’s license here when I came through security the first time.”
“We have a driver’s license that we found. What’s your name?”
“Greg Qualls”
“Let me go look.”
Why the hell did I go get Diego’s Bible? They could have mailed it to him. If I had just stayed in the airport I wouldn’t be dealing with all this right now. God why didn’t you just have Diego not forget his Bible in the van…I would be probably sipping on some coffee right now still reading my book…
But I wouldn’t have realized that I didn’t have my driver’s license…then I would have to go through all the crap to get a new driver’s license. And I would have to pay the money for the new driver’s license. And I would have to deal with the DMV.
So I guess it is a good thing that I did go and get it. Thanks God for having Diego forget his Bible in the van…wait a second. God why didn’t you just make sure that Diego didn’t forget his Bible and make sure that I didn’t loose my driver’s license. I would still be sitting in Starbucks reading my book.
“Here you go sir…just sign hear and print your name her.”
“Thank you sir.”
As I walked to the TSA agent and finally handed him my driver’s license and boarding pass for the second time in the last hour, I began to think to myself…God really does work in mysterious ways.
And I heard in the quiet of my heart, “Yes I do…and I’m good.” I don’t know why God had me go through this little adventure. There could be several reasons. All I know was that, in the end, I felt the hand of God working through all of it. I felt His plan being worked out in my life and I felt drawn closer to Him.
At least He knows what He’s doing, because the majority of the time I don’t have a clue.
Baby Update!
Sorry it has taken so much time to post an update on the state of the baby. Shannon and the baby are doing fine. We had a couple of scares with some bleeding, but everything is fine. We’ve had several ultrasounds and we’ve heard the baby’s heart beat. The doctors have said that everything should be clear sailing from here on out.
Shannon is currently at 16 weeks. Her nausea has gone away and she is feeling better than ever. We will have her next appointment in January and should find out the babies sex shortly thereafter.
Baby!
We’re having a baby!!!! Let me answer all the basic questions first:
Due Date: June 6th 2008
Shannon is at 8 weeks
Yes it was planned
Yes we are excited
If it’s a girl we are calling her Addison
If it’s a boy we are calling him Asa
Shannon is having morning sickness, but she is doing fine
Shannon isn’t having really any cravings. She just has some foods she doesn’t like.
We’ve known for a few weeks now, but wanted to tell everyone after we had our first Dr. visit.
We went and had the ultrasound today and it was really cool. I think today was one of the first times that it sunk in. It still hasn’t completely sunk in yet. But I’m pretty sure it will once I’m changing diapers. The best part was getting to see his/her heart beat (we’re to early in pregnancy to hear it). The baby is 1.6 cm long and basically a little blob at this point. But it’s still pretty cool. I’m going to have to clean some crap out of my wallet now so I can fit baby pictures in the there…or I could just put it on my iPhone. I think I’ll go with the latter (I wonder if Apple make baby toys…if not they need to).






