Mike Rutledge.CA

Prayer is to the soul, what breath is to the body. Yet, so many of us struggle to cultivate a strong and healthy prayer life. Sure we will pray before a meal (which is great by the way), or we will pray when we happen to remember, but if you want to really grow in your prayer life, here are 3 small things you can do that I know will really help you out:

Create a Rule of Prayer, and stick to it.

A rule of prayer is simply a rhythm or schedule that you follow faithfully and habitually that orders when you pray. Spontaneous prayers are always good, but if we rely only on praying when we remember or have a moment, we will be lacking in prayer as our days fill up and our minds grow ever distracted. So, set up a schedule. The typical christian tradition is to pray 3 times a day – morning, noon, and night. I think for the average person this is really good. If you happen to struggle to remember even that simple habit, we now carry our phones around all the time, so we can easily set an alarm for 3 times in the day (that make sense for us), and when it goes off, we take a few minutes and pray. Our prayers don’t have to be elaborate and complicated, and take an hour every time (though we should aim to develop that prayer muscle). 3 Times a day, make the time to pray and remember God.

Use Prewritten or memorized prayers

I know for many charasmatics this seems passionless and lifeless. But I assure you, it is helped my prayer life immensely. This doesn’t mean that I need to use one every time I pray, of course not. However, sometimes it is really good to have path already forged that I can walk through in prayer. This helps me remember many of the different things I want to pray about but when I just pray spontaneously can often forget. The way I use them is as a springboard. Following their path, but allowing the prayer to prompt other prayers in my heart. The Lord’s Prayer is really good, and I have also been using the Jesus prayer often (Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner – I have adapted it with a few other lines as well).

Pray in the moments between the moments

Every day there are many transitional moments. Moments between what was happening and what is happening next, and in those moments it is wise to pause and say a quick prayer (like the Jesus prayer) to bring my heart and mind back to Jesus, asking for his mercy in the next thing and for his grace to cover what I am moving on from. For example, there is moment between working and transitioning into Dad. What is required of me at work and at home can be quite different, and so taking a a few seconds to center my heart on Jesus again and ask for the help to Dad, and the grace to leave work at work, is wisdom. But it can be even more minute than that, in the transition between meetings, in the moment between shifting my focus from one project to the other one, in the moments when I return back to the family from grocery shopping, or between the moment when the kids go to bed and having a quiet moment connect with my wife. All of these are opportunities to bring our attention back to Jesus and train ourselves to rely on him.

These three things are small changes that can have a huge impact in your prayer life. I hope you will take advantage of them!