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.

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[i] Marvin R. Wilson, Our Father Abraham: Jewish Roots of the Christian Faith (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1989).

I came across this article today about a church that is handing out shot glasses (with the phrase “give us a shot” on it) in a local bar to invite people to their church. I love to hear stories about churches doing things like this. I’m personally up for just starting a church service in the bar, but this is a step in the right direction.

You see this past Sunday our pastor spoke about the story of Zacchaeus in Luke 19. One of the things that he pointed out that really struck a chord with me was in verse 7. Jesus enters Jericho this famous rabbi who everyone loves. Then he decides to go against the grain of what all the religious people have been doing (separating themselves from sinners), and he tells the greatest sinner in town that he is going to go eat at his house (the den of iniquity….dum, dum, dum).

Then you see in verse 7, “And when they saw it, they all grumbled, “He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.”" I love that verse. With one act of love and compassion for a man that was the least to deserve it, Jesus looses his entire reputation. You constantly see him loosing his reputation because he would go where “righteous people” wouldn’t go and hang out with people that “righteous people” wouldn’t hang out with.

We need to do the same. Our churches need to the same.

A few weeks ago my wife was talking with an older gentleman about stress and life in general. The older gentleman who is very big on Thai Chi asked my wife, “Do you meditate?” But my wife heard him ask, “Do you medicate?”

Now I know that both of these can help reduce stress… but the means are very different. Let’s just say there was a little confusion until they cleared that up.

It’s amazing how the words we use convey so much meaning. By a simple change of words what we are trying to express is completely changed. If you don’t agree with me, try responding to the phrase, “I love you,” with “I like you.” The difference is worlds apart (and could mean the end to a wonderful relationship).

In the past few years, there has been a growing trend among churches to change some of the words that are used. I know of one church in California that has weekly meetings to go over the language that is used in their church each week. The trend is to move away from using words that have lost their meaning over the years.

One word that I think has lost is meaning over the years is the word service when we talk about our church services. We go to the church service. We have church services. The service was really long this morning. What did you think about the service?

The words role off our tongues without any thought to what they actually mean. It’s just another word in our vocabulary. I think the original meaning might have been the idea that we come together to serve each other. But I don’t think that we even give it any thought any more. If anything the meaning has changed. The word no longer has the meaning of serving each other, but I would say now has the connotation of serving ourselves.

How well was I served this morning at church? The word has the intrinsic focus on self. The reality is that hardly anyone in today’s Christian subculture thinks of church as a time to serve each other. The focus is all inward. “I didn’t like the worship today.” “That sermon was really boring.” “I wish they would have…” “I don’t like it when we sing hymns.” “I don’t like how they’re always asking us to do things.”

The reality is that church is not about the individual. When you look at Acts you constantly see that the church is about community and not about self. You see at the end of chapter two that people are sharing all their possessions. They, “were together and had all things in common.” It wasn’t about them individually. It was about the community.When you read through Acts, you see that the church never had services. Instead you see that they gathered (assembled) together. The church wasn’t about the individual coming to the church, but instead about the church gathering together.

Therefore we have changed the language at our church (like many others) to reflect this concept. We no longer use the words church service, but instead we talk about our gatherings. We don’t have services, but instead we gather. We want to constantly put the focus of our church on the community and not on the individual. Some might just say that this is just semantics or legalism, but we see it as essential to who we are. We want to always be putting the truth forward in every word we use.

So I pose the questions to you:What words have lost meaning for you? What words no longer mean the same for you? Do you ever think about the words that you use and the meanings you are portraying?Do you medicate?