105:1–4)
Beginning our prayer with praise helps us get in the proper posture before God. He is God and we are His creatures, He is our Father and we are His children. He is our Lord and Savior and we are His disciples!
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven.
Next we listen to the Lord and hear what He has to say to us. Scripture is an essential help to hearing God in prayer. Take one of the readings from the Mass of the day, for example, and read it slowly and prayerfully. Ask the Lord to speak to you through it. As I mentioned before, write down any promises from the Lord, words of encouragement, direction, or key Scripture passages.
Sometimes it’s hard to tell God, “Thy will be done.” It can be a struggle to align your will and God’s will. This struggle, the place where our will crosses with the Father’s will, is where the cross is applied to our lives. It is what Jesus felt as He was wrestling in Gethsemane before His passion. This is part of a real life of prayer. We come to Him in personal prayer to learn to do His will—Thy will be done.
Give us this day our daily bread.
Next, we surrender our daily needs to God and intercede on behalf of others. The Lord is concerned about you and the things you’re concerned about. Jesus says that we should ask the Lord for what we need. We should pray for our needs, the needs of others, and for those of the world. The Father is a real Father—we are His children, and children can freely ask their fathers for what they want. The Lord wants to know your heart and your desires. Personally, in order to help me remain faithful in intercession, I keep a sticky note in the front of my journal with a list of people and things I’m praying for.
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those who trespass against us.
Forgiveness is an essential part of following Christ (more on forgiveness in chapter 4). Prayer is real, not imaginary, and in daily prayer we face up to our failures and sins honestly. The Father wants us to take off our masks and be who we are before Him. He already knows who we are. He wants us to know who we are too—sinners in need of forgiveness, but also His children whom He intends to transform from the inside out. We can come to Him and say, “Father forgive me. I need your help.”
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
Shortly after my conversion I had the rude awakening to the reality that I could still yield to my temptations and fall into sin. I fell to impure thoughts. I was humbled by my weakness especially in light of my new awareness of God’s personal love for me. I confessed my sin, and asked the Lord to give me power to obey Him and, when I did fall to temptations, to give me grace to get up and go on with Him.
In this petition we recognize that our human strength is not enough for the trials and temptations that we will face this side of heaven. Temptations are sure to come, Jesus tells us. They are common to humanity, and the Father intends to use them to strengthen us, His children, in living for His will as we patiently surrender to His transforming power at work in us. We can pray: “Lord, lead me not into temptation; give me the power of your Spirit to resist temptations and make me holy.”
We also recognize in this petition that ultimately the author of all the evils we are prone to is the devil (more on the devil in chapter 8). With humility, we recognize that our Father has absolute authority and that we His children can approach Him for His protection to overcome the enemy. We can have confidence that the Father hears us when we pray like this because the Lord Jesus prayed for us with these words, “I do not pray that you should take them out of the world, but that you should keep them from the evil one” (Jn 17:15).
As we began our prayer time remembering who God is and who we are, we end our time with humility and praise to God our Father, who is Lord of heaven and earth and empowers us to live fully as His children!
Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen!
As you end your time of prayer, decide how this time with God will influence the rest of your day. What has the Lord said to you? Where do you need God the most? “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” (Lk 11:28). We resolve to be doers of the Word and not just hearers. Our union with God through personal prayer transforms our hearts and our minds and should also transform our actions.
One last thought about prayer: Don’t lose sight of how wonderful the gift of prayer is! Every day you have the opportunity to fall out of bed, shake off the grogginess of sleep, and spend time with God. You can talk to each other. You can tell Him your troubles. You can receive comfort and counsel from Him. You can grow in wisdom and strength and learn how to walk with Christ. He will transform you as you come to be with Him in an ongoing way! What a great gift He offers us!
Practical Application to Become “Doers of the Word”
Begin planning your personal prayer time—time, location, etc. Write down your intentions and talk to the Lord, asking Him for grace to establish a daily personal prayer time as a normal ongoing part of your life.
Chapter 2
Hearing God in Scripture
Fr. Erik Arnold
When I was a kid, we had a great big leather-bound family Bible on a bookshelf in our living room. It was so big you could hardly miss it—but we seldom took it down and opened it. Our family wasn’t that different from many other Catholic families. We were told that the Bible was important, but it really wasn’t part of our lives. The Bible was there, but it stayed on the shelf.
This chapter is about taking the Bible off the shelf and making it part of your life. Scripture is the Word of God. It has real power. It can bring us freedom and joy and wisdom. God reveals Himself through the words of Scripture, and by reading the Bible prayerfully we can hear God speak directly to us. It’s no wonder reading Scripture is a central part of personal prayer.
God’s Love Letter
The Bible is entirely unique. It looks like other books—words printed on paper, bound in leather or paper-covered boards, sold in stores or online. But the Bible is a book apart. The other books in the religion section of the bookstore contain other people’s ideas about God. The Bible is God’s own Word spoken about Himself. The Holy Spirit inspired the human authors of the Bible to write what God wanted to communicate. It’s a priceless gift to us, given out of love. This is what the Catechism has to say about it:
In Sacred Scripture, the Church constantly finds her nourishment and her strength, for she welcomes it not as a human word, but as what it really is: the word of God. In the sacred books, the Father who is in heaven comes lovingly to meet his children, and talks with them. (CCC 104)
This is the wonder and beauty of Scripture: it flows from the Father’s deep desire to open His heart to us so that we can know Him. Scripture flows from God’s love. It’s one of the greatest of gifts that the Father showers on us. It’s no exaggeration to say that Scripture is God’s love letter to us.
Because
