Strategies for Prayer -- The First in a Series of Twelve Helps

“Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1).

Thereupon the Lord Jesus gave His disciples – and all the Church – the model prayer known as the “Our Father,” or “The Lord’s Prayer” (Matthew 6 contains the fuller version). And for most of my Christian life, I spent about as much time in prayer is it takes to say those few verses. Yet, I knew intuitively there was more to prayer than my experience to that point.

Prayer, the Catechism of the Catholic Church (2725) tells us, is both a gift of grace and a determined response on our part. It always presupposes effort. The great figures of prayer . . . all teach us this: prayer is a battle. Against whom? Against ourselves and against the wiles of the tempter who does all he can to turn man away from prayer, away from union with God. . . . . The "spiritual battle" of the Christian's new life is inseparable from the battle of prayer. (The Catechism teaches some very valuable lessons about prayer. I urge you to look through paragraphs 2725-2745. It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes).

I’d always known prayer was a battle. And that it required effort. Sometimes a lot of effort. But I was mostly unaware of the various tools – let’s call them weapons – available to the Christian, weapons ensuring victory in the battle. Weapons to transform effort to ease.

This, and in the next eleven essays, I will share my prayer strategies that help keep me focused when my mind starts to drift, and energized when boredom begins to settle in. My strategies are not new. Christians throughout history have successfully used tools like these in their own prayer battles. But they were new for me. Some may be new for you.

Strategy One: The Prayer List.

During the last four or five decades, I have used ‘to-do’ lists for just about everything. Everything, that is, except prayer. I don’t know why it took so long for me to figure out I needed a list to help me remember to pray for people or particular needs. But not long after I began the list, it had grown to the point of being unwieldy. I needed to make it more manageable. And I thought of a calendar.

I divided my list into nine columns. I labeled the first, “Daily” and the succeeding seven Monday, Tuesday, and so forth. I labeled the ninth column “Others.”

In the Daily Column I write the names of people I commit myself to pray for every day – for example, family members, pastors and others. Into the columns labeled by the days of the week I place people, such as friends and their families, various politicians and those in Church leadership, people I work with, and students in my classes. Sometimes I put specific people into more than one weekday column so I remember to pray for them more often during the week. In the last column (column nine) I add people as they come to my attention during the week, either when the Holy Spirit drops their name into my heart, or the person asks me for prayer. Those names often get added to either my daily list, or a weekday list, depending on the need.

In review, each day I pray through my “Daily” column, a weekday column, and the “Other” column. Depending on the needs of those for whom I pray, I spend 15 to 30 minutes remembering them before the Lord. At that point, I either conclude my prayer time with the Lord, or I add one of the other strategies cited in later essays to continue my prayer time.

Stay tuned for the next in this series.

(I post fairly often to my blog at www.thecontemplativecatholicconvert.blogspot.com. I also post a Bible study through the book of Hebrews on YouTube. Log onto YouTube and search for my name and 'Hebrews').