HOW TO QUIET YOUR RESTLESS MIND IN PRAYER?
Dear God, I desire to sit in silence
with You, but I’m bringing a lot of noise along with me. Please help me set my
thoughts aside. I give them to You, so I can hear You.
I remember being on a retreat in college when
the leader told us to find a spot and take an hour for quiet reflection – pray,
read and listen. I remember taking my Bible upstairs and sprawling out on the
floor in the hallway. I was ready for God. I closed my eyes to pray, and it was
like I lost all knowledge of the English language.
I did not know what to pray about and
you know what I heard? Silence. Defeaning silence. I looked around at others
who seemed to be so intuned and plugged in at the very moment, and all I could
hear were the crickets outside.
And it wasn’t one of those normal
quiet times we experience on a daily basis. I’m talking about it being so quiet
that I felt that my hearing heightened in an effort to hear anything at all. I
was experiencing hearing that of spiderman. But still nothing.
Prayer continues to be a struggle for
me. Quieting my mind enough to truly invite God in can be difficult. I feel
that when praying, I can find myself too focused on getting it right, that I
don’t give myself enough time to listen. Like, truly listen.
I find myself not knowing what to say
or feeling selfish when my prayers have a lot to do with just me. And don’t
even get me started on praying out loud! That is an entirely different struggle
for me. Let’s just put it this way – When I think about having to pray out loud
in front of people, I am overcome with the feeling that I am going to vomit
from nerves.
However, I’ve slowly come to the
realization that my conversations with God do not need to consist of scripted
prayers that are well crafted and articulated prayers with the utmost
theological precision. They should be honest, raw and from the heart.
After all, there is no one more
capable of handling our raw and disorganized feelings than our Creator.
“Rather, we can engage with God by bringing to Him the things that we actually
feel. And we can do so with whatever words come to us that moment.”
Keeping in mind, prayer doesn’t seem
like such a daunting thing. Prayer is a conversation, rather than a time where
I need to plead my case. And if I miss something or find myself distracted, I
rest in the fact that God knows what’s in my heart, even if I can’t exactly put
into words.
To end with, very recently, I’ve been
trying to focus on and make time for the discipline of prayer. In an effort to
set the tone for the day ahead, I have been trying to start and end my days
with prayer. When I say that, I don’t mean that my alarm goes off, and I
immediately slip down to my knees for the next 30 minutes. Some days, it’s as
simple as sitting up and saying, “Praise to You. Thank You for this day. Use me
today.”
God Bless Us..
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