- WK 1 – APRIL 7TH “Talking To God”
- WK 2 – APRIL 14TH “Talking With God”
- WK 3 – APRIL 21ST “Listening To God”
- WK 4 – APRIL 28TH “Being With God”
PRAYER SERIES SUMMARY
In Session 01, we explore the first stage of prayer: talking to God. When the disciples asked Jesus, “Teach us to pray,” in Luke 11, Jesus replied, “This, then, is how you should pray: “‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name…’” He gave them a pre-made prayer, or what some call a liturgy, to pray to God.
Liturgies can look like praying the Lord’s Prayer, singing through the Psalms or using a prayer app on your phone. This way of praying can be incredibly helpful in various seasons of our lives: when we’re learning to pray, when we’re exhausted or sick, when we’re traveling and find it hard to focus, or when we’re living with grief and doubt, searching for the right words to talk to God. “The prayers of the saints,” as some call them, can carry us through. So we start our four-session journey simply, by praying pre-made prayers to God.
This session’s Practice will focus on the pragmatics of prayer. One of the single most important tasks of discipleship to Jesus is starting, habituating, and fine-tuning a daily prayer rhythm. Your daily prayer can be simple and brief. And as essential as sleeping, eating, and drinking. This is what will keep you praying in the days, months, and years to come.
Ronald Rolheiser writes:
“What clear, simple, and brief rituals provide is precisely
prayer that depends upon something beyond our own
energy. The rituals carry us, our tiredness, our lack of
energy, our inattentiveness, our indifference, and even
our occasional distaste. They keep us praying even when
we are too tired to muster up our own energy.”