of the most important insights I had is that God wants a personal relationship with me. God loves me, Dave, a unique human being. He loves you the same way. He wants to know you, and He wants you to know Him. It’s perfectly possible to go through life with a distant, somewhat impersonal relationship with God. Many people do; I did before asking Jesus to be Lord of my life. When the Holy Spirit opened my eyes, I saw that my relationship with God could be something much more intimate than anything I had ever experienced.
Visiting your Mother
You develop a personal relationship with someone by spending time with them. If you meet someone you’d like to be friends with, you spend time with that person. If you are falling in love with someone, you go out on dates. You might follow friends on Facebook, but if they are truly good friends you also make sure you do things together like dinner or a ball game. It’s the same thing with God. To develop the relationship, you have to spend the time. That’s what prayer is—the time you and God spend together.
Spending the time is at least as important in a relationship as any specific thing that happens between two people. In fact, it’s probably more important. A speaker once said he compares personal prayer to the time we spend with a close family member—your mother, for example. If your mother lives nearby, you might visit her a couple of times a week. Occasionally you will have a deep conversation, but most of the time you will talk about family members, the weather, food, ailments, your work, and the sales at the mall. You might not be very interested in some of this chitchat; you might steal a furtive glance at your watch and wonder how soon you can leave. But something important is growing under the surface. Your bond with your mother is growing stronger and deeper simply by being with her. Intimacy doesn’t come through the chitchat; it’s coming through the time you spend together.
So the first step in personal prayer is taking the time. Go to prayer with the idea you will spend at least a certain amount of time with God. Find some time in your daily schedule and devote it to prayer. Commit yourself to it. If you’re just getting started with personal prayer, try committing yourself to fifteen minutes. This time can gradually increase to perhaps thirty to sixty minutes a day. The important thing is to actually spend this time with God even though nothing much seems to be going on.
Give Him the priority time, the time He deserves as God. This time can be in the morning before you are caught up in the busyness of the day. That’s the time I like to pray. Other people like to pray at the end of the day before bedtime. Some people pray during the day. The particular time you pray doesn’t matter very much; think about what works with your schedule. What matters is making the time, and sticking to it.
The second step is finding the right place to pray. For most of us this will be somewhere in our homes. It might be the corner of a spare bedroom, an old couch in the family room downstairs, or a nook in your apartment. It could also be in church after morning Mass. Wherever you choose should be a quiet place, as free from clutter and visual distractions as possible. It’s a good idea to stick to the same prayer place every day if you can. Over time it will become your sacred space and when you go there, you’re ready to pray.
The next step is identifying what you should bring to prayer. This varies considerably from person to person. I’ll share what I do. Keep in mind this is only an example of what one man does. I bring a Bible, my journal, a devotional, my planner, a pad, and a pen. I keep the pad around to jot down any distractions—the thoughts that interrupt my focus on God. I’ve found that I can get rid of distractions more easily if I write them down and tell myself that I’ll think about them later. I usually read the daily Scriptures from a devotional, typically The Word Among Us magazine, and meditate on their wonderful reflections. I read and underline important Scriptures in my Bible. I use my journal to write any insights—things that the Lord is saying to me.
I always write down what the Lord has spoken to me, any senses or particular things I’ve offered to Him in prayer. I found this helpful because it’s easy to go from a place of faith to a place of unbelief in our lives. A journal allows me to keep a record of God’s promises and action in my life. It is a beautiful way to remind myself of His presence and to give thanks to God for the good things He has done.
You will have to adjust your prayer time according to circumstances and seasons in life. Parents of small children will find it difficult to stick to a set prayer time. Illness will keep you in bed. You will travel. There will be times when work and family responsibilities will be so great that you scramble to find time to do everything that needs to be done. By all means make the necessary adjustments to your prayer time. You’ll be better able to cope with these pressures if you’ve already established the habit of regular personal prayer.
Your prayer will change over time. You might want to read more Scripture, spend more time silently listening, less time on something else. Pray about what you should do in prayer. Be led by the Holy Spirit. Be like the old peasant who spent hours before the crucifix in the church pastored by St. John Vianney, the Cure of Ars. One day St. John asked the man what he did in his time of prayer. The peasant said, “I look at Him, and He looks at me.”
Lord, Teach us to Pray
Our teacher in prayer is Jesus. When the disciples wanted to know how to pray, they went to the Lord and asked Him. He said:
Pray then like this:
Our Father who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread;
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those who trespass against us;
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
(Mt 6:9–13)
The Our Father is Jesus’ most explicit teaching about prayer. What follows is a part-by-part analysis of what Jesus teaches us in the Our Father (much of this is inspired by Fr. Michael Scanlan’s excellent book Appointment with God.)
Our Father who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
The Our Father begins with praise. This is the natural starting point for prayer—praising God for who He is, thanking Him for the many blessings He has showered on us. Jesus praised His Father: “Father, I thank you that you have heard me” (Jn 11:41). “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth” (Lk 10:21). In the Liturgy of the Hours, the Church praises God throughout the day, every day, everywhere in the world. I like to praise God by praying the Psalms, such as Psalm 105:
O give thanks to the Lord, call on his name,
make known his deeds among the peoples!
Sing to him, sing praises to him,
tell of all his wonderful works!
Glory in his holy name;
let the hearts of those who seek the Lord
rejoice!
Seek the Lord and his strength,
seek
