A BLUEPRINT FOR Prayer
We Speak To God
- Presence
- Forgiveness
- Thanksgiving
- Petition
God speaks to us
- Make a effort to listen to God through a specific reading from the Bible. Remain there.
We speak to God
- See what you need to change.
- Share the Word of God with others.
PRAYING with the WORD
1. First stop running and sit still. Quiet and calm, yourself.
2. Place yourself in an attitude of deep listening, then take up a suitable passage from, scriptures. Read it slowly and listen attentively as you read, substitute your name for those used when 'you' occurs, so as to make it as personal as possible.
3. While you read, pause just a little longer over those lines or phrases or words that strike you. They may either console or disturb you, confirm, or reproach you.
4 . After you have finished reading the passage, come back to those lines or phrases or words that struck you. Stay with one of these as long as you can. Ponder over it in your heart as much as you can. These words may say something to you about yourself, e.g. greater acceptance of self, about your relationship with others, about the father's healing and forgiving love in Jesus, etc
5. Start a conversation with the Lord around this: Now asking questions, now listening, now expressing your feelings, your concerns, now pausing to Listen to Him, now waiting on Him, now surrendering to Him.. Do not try to draw out applications or make resolutions. Always be careful not to drag the Word of God down to suit your needs - Let the word of God judge you, not you it. slowly leave your own plans aside if that is what He wants, and learn to take up His thoughts, His ways.
6. Do not hurry to move on to the next sentence or phrase, but stay where you are for as long as it appeals to you. By your renewed
encounter with the Lord through the text you will strike deeper
Levels of friendship with Him.
Patrick O’Sullivan, SJ
Conditions FOR PRAYER
1.silence - to be silent is not merely to be mute. Spiritual silence is. an emptying of oneself in order to make room for God.
2. detachment - Means to abandon, ourselves in God’s hands as Christ did. 'Father I abandon myself in your hands.. Do with me what you will." Have the courage to present our lives like a blank sheet where he can write whatever he wants.
3. PERSONAL acceptance - we go to God as we are, and. not pretend to be someone we're not. He loves us as we are and with what we have.
4. Optimism and HOPE - Hope prevents us from settling and taking things for granted. It implies that we aim high and are never satisfied with what has been reached so far (i cor 13.7). Pessimism is never a fruit of the spirit. Hope means to believe in God’s love.
5. Petition - we become beggars before God, knowing that even, the steps we take are given, to us by God. Ask and you will receive, knock and I will open..* (Mt 7:7)
6 . effort - prayer is a work, a discipline, it cannot rest upon, mere spontaneity. Prayer tomorrow begins today or there will be no prayer tomorrow.
7. Sincerity - in prayer we reveal ourselves to God, the more we are present to him the more we become present to ourselves, to be present to Jesus is to step deeper into ourselves, net step out of ourselves.
8. Resolution - Never finish prayer without a resolution,. We have to accommodate our life to the gospel in every prayer we make. Prayer requires a change.
