How To Change Through Prayer
If you’re like me, you embrace a challenge. Most entrepreneurs and athletes think the same way: “How will this – insert pretty much anything – help me to grow?” Why should change through prayer be any different? Not only is spiritual change the only kind that lasts forever you also have the very best trainer in the world, God himself, who accompanies you in your everyday growth.
Let’s jump right in: Here are some ways to change through prayer in a way that will make your eternity a blast!
1. Express Yourself Freely
If you want to change through prayer, try journaling in a way that is fresh, raw, and real. Write out your prayers to God on paper. It’ll slow you down and you’ll find that the growth results are powerful.
The purpose of prayerful writing is far beyond what is commonly called “journaling” in a secular sense. Yes, there are huge psychological benefits that come from expressing internal struggles on paper, and the resulting growth is beautiful and can be a part of prayer. Seen from a Christian perspective, this style of writing prayerfully is about having a conversation with God. Secular journaling leaves out the intimately personal connection piece. Your awareness of God’s presence and desire to communicate with him will transform the very way you think about your past and will prepare you better for your future.
2. Listen Attentively to God’s Voice
Experiencing one of God’s inspirations in your life can be an overwhelmingly joyful event. These encounters can bring you quickly to tears or fill you with indescribable peace. God, in his wisdom, knows what you need to feel, know, or even suffer in every moment of your life for you to take the next step closer to him. Nonetheless, let your focus not be so much on how much you enjoy his spiritual gifts, or detest the trials he allows you to endure, as on what lesson God wants to teach you through them. Every one of God’s gifts is a stepping stone closer to him.
Anywhere … Literally
Keep in mind that hearing God is not something that has to happen during prayer alone, however, and this is the important point, if you spend time during prayer training your ear, it will be that much easier everywhere else to be attentive and aware of what God is trying to tell you.
3. Pray About Your Distractions
I’ve never heard anyone encourage me to “get distracted in prayer.” But yes, that’s exactly what I’m doing, or almost that.
If your response to getting distracted each time is a shrug: “Oh well, I got distracted again,” instead of a resolute attitude to fix what needs fixing, it’s very possible that you’ll be praying years from now, and find that your distractions are still the same few things – e.g. breakfast, your upcoming daily tasks, worries about the workplace – because you have never actually asked God into those parts of your life.
Change your focus, change your routine, change your attitude, change yourself, change your life … God’s ready and willing to help.
4. Talk To God About What You Believe
Faith, hope, and love are not easy to describe and are even harder to explain because we’re not talking about what is naturally possible for human beings. As supernatural virtues, they are given to us only through Baptism. God the Trinity takes up his dwelling in our soul; we become one with God; in a word, we become divine. Wow, talk about awe-inspiring!
In brief, growth in these virtues is God’s gift to us, who works in coordination with our freedom and our choices. The stronger our faith, hope, and love, the more united we are with God, who lives in our soul. There is no other growth that is more important!
Since these virtues define how united we are with God, they work hand-in-hand. As one of them grows, all of you grows. For example, if your faith is stronger, you will therefore also be more capable of loving sacrifice. As you learn to trust God in your day to day, you will thus also become more patient and kind. If your love for God grows, you will essentially become a better human being in every aspect.
5. Use Your Needs To Lead You To Pray
There is opportunity around every corner! Previously I talked about using even your most mundane distractions to lead you humbly back to God. And what is more human and common than needing things? With the broken world that you live in, there will never be a moment where “all your prayers have been answered.” Suffice it to remember humanity’s constant prayer for world peace! So, take heart, and learn to take advantage of the need you have to regularly ask God for his assistance.
Here’s a thought: If every time you recognized that you needed something – anything really, the bottle opener when you grab a beer, the remote when you sit down to watch TV – you allowed it to remind you that you have a loving Father who is looking out for your every need, you would hardly need to do anything else to remain close to him and continually renew your gratitude and filial identity.
Prayer doesn’t have to be complicated! The ideal to shoot for is that you become a prayerful, full-of-prayer, type of person, who can connect with God through your surrounding life without having to think too much about it. It should become second nature.
6. CHANGE Through Prayer In A Broader Sense
Growth doesn’t just happen in the gym. The path toward growth includes diet, sleep, stress levels, access to fresh air, vitamins, minerals, and hormone levels… I love this analogy because prayer is similarly extremely complicated. After all, it includes everything!
I’m just saying if you want prayer to change you without making an effort all around, that not going to happen.
Practice should be sustained by prayer, and prayer by practice.
Pope Gregory the Great
Conclusion
You will pray as you live, and live as you pray; it’s not optional, it’s how it works. Prayer should change your life!
But we are called to grow in prayer, it’s the purpose of life and really the only thing worth living for.
A few questions to take to prayer
- Am I committed to becoming a saint?
- What do I need to tweak in my prayer life to be more attentive to the Holy Spirit?
