The Spirituality and Practice of Continuous Prayer

Can a person pray continuously? This article discusses the spirituality and practice of continuous prayer. It seems that a person cannot pray continuously because he has to think and do other things besides praying, like working for his sustenance, cleaning his house or surroundings, taking care of other people like children, resting and sleeping, and so forth.

But in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 we are exhorted by Paul the Apostle to pray without ceasing. Some commentators take this passage to mean to pray with perseverance. But I would rather take it to mean praying 24 hours a day, every minute of those hours and every second of those minutes.

How Can We Pray Continuously?

First of all if your definition of prayer is asking favors from God, as some people understand by their practice of prayer, for they pray only when they think they need something from God, then there is no reason to pray continuously because you cannot keep on asking favors from God. There comes a time when you think you do not need favors from God and so you stop praying. You may simply say, There is nothing I have to pray for and so I stopped praying.

But real prayer is simply conversation with God. Or we can add an adjective. Prayer is a loving conversation with God. In this sense we can always pray for we can carry on a loving conversation with God, even when we are asleep.

We can mentally hold a loving conversation with God about the things that we are doing. Usually we do self-talk. We talk things over in our mind. For example when we wake up in the morning we ask ourselves, What am I going to do today? Such talk can be modified so that instead of asking ourselves, we ask God. God, what shall I do today?

Then there arises this question: Does God hear our question and if he does, does he answer? How can we be certain about his answer? We might just be imagining about his answer?

The fact is that God knows our thinking, as he knows everything that happens in and around us. Even before a thought comes into our mind he knows that we will think about that thought. And what we think we imagine is his answer is indeed his answer if we follow certain guidelines.

Guidelines for Continuous Prayer

The first requirement for continuous prayer is a desire to know more about God and to know him more intimately and putting that desire into action. This means that we read and study more and more his words in the Scriptures. This act of reading and studying is already praying if we constantly talk to him about what we read and study. If we do this not only will we know more about God, we will also know him more intimately. We will know his thoughts and feelings, as it were.

The second requirement for continuous prayer is the practice of moments of silence with him, just to be with him in silence. In our relationships with human beings we cannot keep on talking with them. There are moments when we are just with them, listening to them. The same can be said of God. There are moments when we just need to be with God in silence, listening to him.

The third requirement is developing the attitude of gratefulness to God. We thank God for everything and for all the time he gives us. Gratitude cements our relationship with God. This deep seated attitude of gratefulness is prayer of the highest kind and it can be expressed while we are sleeping. We sleep being grateful to God.

If we practice this kind of prayer the time will come when we will keep on listening to God amidst all our activities and the Spirit will describe us as walking with God as Enoch walked with God. The preceding sentence is a repetition of what I wrote before. But it is worth repeating to encourage us to perform the spirituality and practice of continuous prayer.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/devspirit

for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alternativehealth

for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends

for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline

for earning some income from the Internet

Here are your links to download the e-books for FREE. To download a copy of A NEW CHRIST by Wallace D. Wattles click this website http://bit.ly/anewchrist. To download a free copy of A NEW EARTH by Eckhart Tolle click this website http://bit.ly/ebookanewearth. I hope that you enjoy reading these free e-books and profit much from them, as I have also profited greatly from them.

The Spirituality and Practice of Scheduled Prayer

Basic to spirituality is prayer. There are many who recommend scheduled prayer in their spirituality and practice. The Muslims pray five times on specific hours of the day. The monks have their own schedule of prayers. So it is presumed that scheduled prayer is better than unscheduled prayer. Rev. Jim Stephens recommends scheduled prayer in his very helpful booklet “The All-Time 10 Best Tips on Prayer for Beginners That I Have Ever Heard”. K. W. Leslie recommends scheduled and unscheduled prayer in his blogpost “Prayer times: Early-morning, late at night, or whenever.”

Has Scheduled Prayer Improved Our World?

After years of scheduled prayer I began to ask: Has scheduled prayer improved our world? And I asked another question similar to this: Has scheduled prayer improved the lives of those who practice it? My answer to both questions is in the negative. It is a big NO. I notice that scheduled prayer has not improved the lives of those who do have scheduled prayer life, like the seminarians, the priests, the monks, the religious Sisters and others. They are just as unloving and as un-compassionate as those who do not practice prayer at all. At least that is what I observe. Two world wars and a host of national and regional wars have been fought while men and women of all religions were practicing scheduled prayer. So I concluded that scheduled prayer has not changed our world.

Basic Flaw in Scheduled Prayer

The basic flaw in scheduled prayer is that we make God listen to us on our own terms. Imagine telling a person, “I cannot talk to you right now. I have five times to talk to you during the day and this time is not one of those five times. Talk to me during one of those five times. Here they are: from 5:00 to 5:30 in the morning, etc.”. This sounds very rude but this is what happens when we schedule our prayer time with God.

The argument for scheduled prayer is that by scheduling it we give it the necessary priority and we perform it above all our other activities. Most of us do not realize that by doing so we put prayer on the level of our other activities, only it is a top priority activity. We forget a very simple truth: Prayer is not so much our activity as it is God's activity on us. It is God's time of taking us by his hand and telling us about himself and telling us about ourselves and thus transforming us.

True Spirituality and Practice of Prayer

Real prayer is not so much we talking to God as we listening to God. It is not taking up a prayer book and begin reading it. Nor is it making some gestures and then addressing God, even praising and thanking him.

Genuine prayer is getting to a place and time when we can simply listen to God. He speaks to us all the time. It is for us to pause and listen to him. Only this kind of prayer is life changing. All others are just babbling of words and exercises of our imagination and reasoning.

If we practice this kind of prayer the time will come when we will keep on listening to God amidst all our activities and the Spirit will describe us as walking with God as Enoch walked with God.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/devspirit

for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alternativehealth

for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends

for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline

for earning some income from the Internet

Here are your links to download the e-books for FREE. To download a copy of A NEW CHRIST by Wallace D. Wattles click this website http://bit.ly/anewchrist. To download a free copy of A NEW EARTH by Eckhart Tolle click this website http://bit.ly/ebookanewearth. I hope that you enjoy reading these free e-books and profit much from them, as I have also profited greatly from them.

The Benefits of Daily Prayer

There are many psychological benefits of daily prayer. You feel that you have fulfilled an obligation. You also feel that you are better than the others who do not pray everyday. You may even feel that you are right with your God because you have fulfilled an obligation.

Not Really Benefits But Drawbacks

But on reflection these benefits are not really genuine benefits. They are benefits that may rather mislead you to your spiritual ruin. Thinking that you are better off than others who do not pray everyday is rather a possible deception rather than a benefit. There are certainly many others who do not pray everyday but are better off than you. The proof for this can be easily done. You just look at the children around you. They are certainly better off than you in spiritual values although most of them do not pray everyday. They are more carefree, more cheerful, more playful, more trusting than you.

In fact the psychological benefits I mentioned above, if you think you have these, are signs that you are not really praying. You may be going to the church and attend Mass daily, or you may be opening your Bible and meditate on the words there daily and speak with the one who you think is your God, or you may gather daily in a prayer circle where after some reflection on the Bible you lift up prayer requests among your companions to God for your self and for others. But if the effect of all these actions is that you think you are better off than others who do not pray, that you have fulfilled an obligation, that you are now right with your God, then certainly it is very clear that you have not really prayed. You have gone through a series of rituals or actions which pretended that you pray but in reality you only boasted your self or ego. It was an ego trip.

The benefits of real, genuine daily prayer are far different from these psychological benefits.

What Genuine Prayer Is

So, first of all, what is genuine prayer? Genuine prayer is frequent, solitary, loving conversation with God. It is frequent. It does not happen once in a while when we are stuck with problems. It is done many times during the day, not just once or three or thirty times. It is something that is spontaneous, as spontaneous as we would converse with a friend.

Genuine prayer is solitary. There is an aloneness and silence surrounding real prayer. You may pray amidst a crowd but even there you are in recollection, by yourself, and silent in your demeanor.

And finally, genuine prayer is a loving conversation. It is a conversation between lovers. You feel a closeness to God which you cannot feel outside of this period of genuine prayer.

This is the kind of prayer which produces great benefits for us, spiritual and otherwise.

Benefits of Daily, Genuine Prayer

The first general benefit from daily, genuine prayer is growth in self-knowledge. We know more of our selves. This is because God is like a mirror. By conversing and looking at him during prayer time we see ourselves more truly. In genuine prayer we see God as he is, not just as we want him to be. And God tells us who we are. We become truly ourselves and see truly ourselves in daily genuine prayer. We see God for who he is and we realize who we are.

The second benefit, which flows from this, is that we become humble. Seeing who God is and realizing who we are makes us see ourselves for what we really are, poor creatures of God. This is not surprising because genuine self-knowledge always produces true knowledge of our weaknesses and strengths before God. We come to know ourselves as poor sinners, if we use the language of theology. We realize our helplessness. We know without God we can do nothing.

The third benefit, which in turn flows from this, is that we become confident. This is paradoxical. Knowing our helplessness we become confident, instead of feeling helpless. This happens because we now know that we can bank on the strength and power of God. As we know our incapacity, we realize God’s infinite capacity to do things through us and for us.

These are the three primary benefits we get from daily, genuine prayer. Other benefits flow from these three primary benefits. We become more active in our work because we know we possess strength and power beyond those of our own. We have less worry in our lives because we know that we can do all things through him who strengthens us. And we become loving and considerate of others because we are near the source of love, God himself, and we know also the weaknesses of others.

If these benefits are enjoyed by us, then we are really genuinely praying every day. But if the opposite attitudes are in us, if we become proud, worried, unloving and inconsiderate of others, we are not really praying everyday no matter what religious exercises we are going through, whether we call them meditation or contemplation or retreat or recollection or prayer rallies.

Daily prayer, genuine daily prayer, makes us know ourselves better, humble, confident, loving, less worried about our affairs, more active in our work and considerate of others.

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Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

Here are your links to download the e-books for FREE. To download a copy of A NEW CHRIST by Wallace D. Wattles click this website http://bit.ly/anewchrist. To download a free copy of A NEW EARTH by Eckhart Tolle click this website http://bit.ly/ebookanewearth. I hope that you enjoy reading these free e-books and profit much from them, as I have also profited greatly from them.