What to do When You Feel Inadequate in Prayer

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I recently spent time with a friend who said this, “I’m just not very good at prayer.” This stuck with me for days and I’ve thought about it ever since. My friend is a devout Catholic. He loves his faith and serves the poor in very public ways.


How could a man who has such a strong faith not have confidence in his own prayer life? This very question haunted me for years. In fact, it provided the impetus for my upcoming book The 5 Habits of Prayerful People. I found myself as a freshman in college and teaching myself how to pray.  I was the one asking, “how could I, a Christian for many years, not be comfortable with prayer?”


Can you relate to this? Do you feel inadequate approaching God in prayer? 

 

For Catholics in particular, this question reveals a deep issue. It’s not that Catholics don’t have faith- Lord knows they do!  Rather, it’s the living cultivation of a personal relationship with the Lord that is tough sledding for many. Protestants, more versed in the process of encounter with Christ, tend to learn how to pray more than Catholics. While Catholics say a lot of prayers, many fail to go beneath the surface. As a result, the many recited prayers fail to take the believer deeper and lack stickiness.

 

Pope Francis’ emphasis on encounter is a breath of fresh air and might help more Catholics with their understanding of prayer. In Evangelii Gaudium (2013), he said this, “I invite all Christians, everywhere, at this very moment, to a renewed personal encounter with Jesus Christ, or at least an openness to letting him encounter them; I ask all of you to do this unfailingly each day.” (For other fantastic quotes, refer to Aleteia’s post.)


That doesn’t mean that a phrase alone (i.e. encounter) will teach someone to pray. What it may do it help us better understand that we need an encounter with Christ in order to form a prayerful relationship with him. That personal encounter with the Lord then moves us to love others with greater compassion and sensitivity. 


I was very fortunate as a teenager. Some very good friends, Protestant Christians, took me under their wing and discipled me. The faith-foundation provided by my parents then flourished. These friends brought me on a retreat and gave me the opportunity to come face to face with Christ. I was invited to make a decision- live for myself or live for Him. I chose the latter. Barely knowing the commitment I was making, I made a small gesture towards God. Since then, as you can imagine, everything has changed.


Having had an encounter with Christ, I then learned how to have a daily quiet time. This was like water on a small seed. Things grew from there. Eventually I would learn how to be present to others, especially those on the margins of society. Still, it all began with an invitation to know Christ in a personal way. Not a bunch of rote prayers. Not another decade of the Rosary (although powerful in itself). It was a simple presentation of the Gospel message: God loves us, humankind is sinful, Jesus died for us, choosing Christ as savior. Today, I try to have a quiet time every day and it’s made all the difference. The simplicity of the Gospel unfolds each day for me and needs to be affirmed daily in my quiet times.


I can relate to my friend who expressed that he doesn’t feel confident in prayer. There are times when I don’t feel all that good at it myself. Sometimes, I feel like I’m going through the motions. Other times, I feel like I’m giving God scraps instead of my full attention.


Even still, I press on. This is the work of a Christian. Never having complete confidence in our relationship with Christ, we still understand that prayer is vital to our faith. The key is to keep at it.  Talking to God takes both faith and practice. Much of our tradition focuses on the former and neglects the latter.


When you feel as if your prayer life isn’t hitting the mark or is less than perfect, don’t give up hope. God wants your daily quiet time to be consistent and fruitful. When you have your next prayer time, savor the moment. What a gift it is to be in relationship with the living God!

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How the Bible Can Enliven Your Prayer

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I coach my son’s 8th grade basketball team.  We had a game recently and it was evident that we were not only tired but underhydrated.  The guys looked pale and just weren’t playing up to their usual standards.  The coaches kept telling them to get a drink, to take a breath and to keep adding water to their systems.

 

It struck me- the Bible is very similar for a Christian as water is to an athlete.  Without the proper hydration, the athlete will ultimately run out of fuel and begin to slow down.  For someone who wants to be praying well, the Bible is very, very similar.  It’s an essential helpmate to an active life of prayer.

 

Let’s look at some practical reasons for reading the Bible and including it in our prayer time:

 

1. Jesus read it.  Sure, Jesus didn’t have the entire New Testament nor did he have a “pocket version” with the handy strings to mark your spot (I love those).  Still, he was not only familiar with Old Testament texts but he had memorized more than a few of them.  It was a reference for him and one that he obviously held in high regard.

2. The Saints loved the Bible. Every saint, at some point in their lives, has drawn great inspiration from the Bible.  Consider the following quotes as examples,

  • St. Jerome, “Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.”
  • St. Gregory, “The Holy Bible is like a mirror before our mind’s eye. In it we see our inner face. From the Scriptures we can learn our spiritual deformities and beauties. And there too we discover the progress we are making and how far we are from perfection.”
  • St. John of the Cross, “Seek by reading and you will find by meditating. Knock by praying, and it will be opened to you in contemplation.”

3. The Bible is a Bridge to God.  No person, no matter how holy they may be, can go it alone.  We need one another and we need a map to get to heaven.  The Bible, alongside Sacred Tradition, is our map.  It serves as a bridge to holy living.  Ask someone who is holy what they read each day and they will likely pull out their Bible.

 

With these reasons for why the Bible is so important for a Christian, how can you use it when you pray?

 

For me, it looks like this:

1. In the morning: when I have my quiet time, one of the first things I read is the Daily Mass readings.  Depending on what’s featured for that day, I’ll either look at:

  • The Old Testament reading
  • The Psalm
  • The New Testament reading

Note that I rarely look at all three and I don’t use a physical Bible. I usually go to www.usccb.org and read the Mass readings on my iPad.  While I have two master’s degrees and a doctorate, I’m just not sharp enough to contemplate three separate readings.  Rather, like a laser beam, I choose one and focus on that.  It’s ok to choose one small snippet and read it over and over again.  The temptation here will be to read it very fast, especially if you’ve read it in the past.  Slow down.  Read it again.  Ask God to tell you what it means.  Turn it over in your mind.  See how it applies to your life. 

2. In the evening: right before bed, I pick up my leather-covered Bible that I keep on my dresser and I read a few verses of one Psalm. Right now, I’m working through the Psalms very slowly.  I might take a week on the same Psalm!  When it feels like it’s time to move on to another book, I’ll do that.  I keep it simple and just try my best to end a day with a small but good dose of Scripture.  It works for me.

 

You might use the Bible in different ways during your day and that’s ok.  The key, as the saints before us have taught, is to read the Bible as often as you can and figure out the “spots” where it best fits into your busy day.  

 

I think you’ll find that, like water keeps an athlete hydrated, reading the Bible keeps the Christian praying well. 

You Want Quiet But All You Hear is Noise

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The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas in the United States is very, very hectic.  I appreciate Joshua Becker’s recent post on doing holiday traditions that you want to do rather than feel that you need to do.

Still, even with an “on my own terms” mindset to the holidays, you can feel overwhelmed.  I know that I do.

The spillover of course is that when you go to pray, your mind is still racing...

  • Is the gift for Aunt Helen the right gift?
  • When is that holiday party?
  • Did we get the tickets for Breakfast with Santa? (An event I despise by the way but that’s another story.)

The list goes on and on.  A seasoned person of prayer knows how to gently hit “pause” in his head when these thoughts barge in.  A person with a young prayer life will be pulled in a thousand different directions when these thoughts come in.  Whether you are new at prayer or are steeped in holiness, silence and quiet are very important.  

St. John of the Cross said this, "What we need most in order to make progress is to be silent before this great God with our appetite and with our tongue, for the language he best hears is silent love." 

I suggest, when the racing thoughts approach, that you do one of two things:

  1. Say to yourself, “I’m going to let that one go...” and truly let it go.  
  2. Write it down.  If it’s really important, write it down or capture it in your task manager.  This way, you can then go back to prayer and have the confidence of knowing that you can revisit the item later.

Prayer is an art and takes practice.  With these two strategies, you’ll be able to handle the distractions that come your way.

How to Read Slower and Yet Retain More

The rise of Twitter, Facebook and a host of “read it later” services (i.e. Instapaper and Pocket) make reading a lost art.

Think about it- in the last week, how many articles or posts did you read in their entirety? Notice that I didn’t mention books since fewer and fewer people read them (read: "The Decline of the American Book Lover")

Still, reading accomplishes at least three things:

  1. It humbles us. Trappist monk Thomas Merton once said, "Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real." When we read, we bow to the ideas of another.
  2. It enhances our leadership. As the saying goes, “all leaders are readers”.  The best leaders I know have 2-3 books that they devour at one time, hungry for new insights.
  3. It deepens our spiritual core. Reading, in its pure sense, is an old fashioned way of taking in information, making sense of it and then putting it into action.

I noticed, about 6 months ago, that I was reading very little. Sure, I was scanning a ton but as for reading things in full, I was a slacker.

What to do? I decided to declare “Read it Later Bankruptcy” and start from scratch.  I deleted all of my old articles and posts and just started fresh.  Heck, what are the real chances that I'll get to that article that I saved months ago?  Slim to none...

This meant a few practical action steps:

  1. I would empty (i.e. read fully) any article that I had saved in Instapaper within 24 hours.
  2. I would be much more choosy as to which blog posts I would put into Instapaper.
  3. I would take my time and not rush through things.
  4. Hardcover books would become a pleasurable experience once again. As a result, David Brooks’ The Road to Character has been in my hands a lot lately.  It feels slow (and wonderful) to turn the pages and enjoy the author's salient points.

One surprising side benefit to all of this is that I’m now reading other things in more consistent spurts. Our family has the Bible Verse of the Day (said in a Count Dracula sort of way for dramatic effect) just before dinner. Also, my morning devotions have become more contemplative and patient as I’m taking time to really read rather than just scan.  Finally, by reading slower, I'm sitting with the author, getting to know him and his thoughts.

The bottom line: by reading slower, I'm retaining more.

As a follow up- how do you read each day? What are your routines and habits? How can you slow down your own reading such that you not only take in information but enjoy the ride?