Prayer Helps

Prayer helps our lives, our relationship to the Father. We also need help to pray, so prayer helps, and we need prayer help. I grabbed six books out of the box of books I am taking to a conference and want to share with you a little about each one. These “prayer helps” have a different role and purpose. You may be blessed by each of them, as I have been, or you may not like any of them. Don’t worry, you are not helpless. I have at least another hundred in the box, but here are six for today.

Each book can plan a role in helping to overcome a different prayer hindrance. I am going to neglect numerous aspects in each book and look at one way, in a big picture context, how this book can help. 

The prayer hindrances I will look at are

• ·         Organization
• ·         Methods
• ·         Mindsets
• ·         Imagination
• ·         Busyness
• ·         Don’t know what to say

If you don’t have time to read a whole book, I suggest you rethink the process. Use the book like I use the refrigerator. In my frig I place stuff I want to consume later. I usually don’t eat everything in the frig at one time, but I go in and select things I am desiring. In the same way books can be consumed little by little. The pressure to read a whole book can be avoided by allowing it to hold onto things for us until we are ready to consume them.

Organization

The “24-7 Prayer Manual” is a tool used for organizing a prayer room. Even if you are not leading a prayer room being somewhat organized helps you consistently pray and many of the ideas of creating an atmosphere of prayer can be of great personal use. Having a plan, a place and a sense of mission (purpose) can serve as tools to defeat hindrances. Here is my example of my need and use of space.

It seems like I am easily distracted; although I can often spend hours with the Lord, getting started is often hard. I enjoy new. New thoughts, new places, new book, new Bibles; almost anything new helps me enjoy what I am doing. So I have several places of prayer that help me keep things new. I have a room, a porch, a swing, two parks and a State Park. Organizing and having a prayer plan and place helps me to go beyond thinking about prayer and actually praying.

Check out the “24-7 Prayer Manual for practical insight and helps.

Methods

Gene Edwards in “100 Days In The Secret Place” reveals numerous methods of prayer captured through a story telling style and saints of the past. Numerous short insights, many of which can be read in less than five minutes, have topics that reveal methods. As you go through “100 Days In The Secret Place” you may not realize you are using different methods, but you are. Gene’s presentation is very organic and you will discover the heart seeking new and different types of connections with the Lord. I strongly recommend a read-pray-read-pray approach with the book.

Mindset

Some have called “The Three Battlegrounds” by Francis Frangipane a classic in spiritual warfare. I believe this is true. Francis deals with the battleground of our mind and relates that conflict to what is happening in the world around us. In this understandable approach to deep truths you will gain clarity into how to pray and position your heart in conflict. Issues of pride, self-righteousness, envy, and anger will be exposed for what they are and how they hinder our success. This quote helps to sum up the mindset Francis seeks us to have.

“Victory begins with the name of Jesus on our lips. It is consummated by the nature of Jesus in our hearts.”

Imagination

"The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius” is a great resource for those who want to engage the whole person in prayful connection with God. The book I will reference contains an introduction to the exercises that will help one understand the use of the imagination in communion with God. There are numerous translations and editions of this work and while each one has value, they are not all as easy to read and understand.

Ignatius takes you through weeks of spiritual exercises, asking you to use your imagination, to connect using your ability to reason, smell, feel, hear and taste. What may at first seem strange to modern religious people (you and I) it is not uncommon for us to go to a movie and have all the sensory data provided for us. The world a hundred years previous often used the imagination where today little of the imagination is used. It may be worth the read to reawaken a part of our God given abilities.

Busyness

Too busy to pray? No you’re not! You just need to learn how to commune with God as you live. Jean-Pierre De Caussade in “The Sacrament of thePresent Moment” shows how to live a life that is in fellowship with God and not struggling to be significent. Because this method of prayer is ancient we tend to reject it as not possible, not valid for our day. I suggest you try it before you judge the value of this form of prayer. I first read this book while leading a team of youth on a relief work project in Mississippi. Talk about a pressure filled busy time of life.

Warning – this book will challenge your modern mindset and often your theology. Many of us have come to use busyness as our measuring tool for worth and success. Many of us pride ourselves on being driven, focused and purposeful. Ideas of peace, surrender, contentment and being emotionally at ease are not pillars in the church in America and may seem more strange than Godly at first. You may not want to practice everything in this book but if you take a step toward walking with God through life and a step away from being driven, you take a step in the right direction.

Don’t Know What to Say

Many people approach prayer feeling the pressure to say the right thing. Other people find words hard, not naturally flowing and that talking to God is emotionally draining as they strive to consider each word and phrase before speaking it out. When the burden is too great, it is emotionally draining to prayer. The joy, delight and pleasure of communing with God is lost in the burden of producing the right words.

While I don’t seem to have a hard time with words, often when I am tired or pressured it helps me to turn to a book of common prayer. There are many out there but a friend gave me “The Book of Common Prayer according to the Episcopal Church” a few years back, and I have enjoyed it. 

While you can use this book in the traditional way, I often walk and speak aloud these prayers, stopping when I feel the encouragement of God and adding my own voice to that of the author. Often I will read a prayer several times, adding emphasis on different words or thoughts each time. At other times I turn to the Psalms and spontaneously sing, making up my own melody and using the words of scripture as my content. When I do this I allow the Psalms to carry the emotions. I can lament, celebrate, morn or delight in harmony with the passage and in union with God.

So there is my list of helps. Enjoy. I hope they help in equipping you to overcome a few of the hindrances of prayer. If you would like to follow me please check out the link and do so. If you have a question or if I can help you in some way, contact me though this page or at rodneydrury@gmail.com