Another thought on unceasing prayer.

Community.  If I have a prayer that I’ve been praying, and I’m to pray unceasingly, how do I do this?

Perhaps that’s where community comes in?  If I ask you to pray for me. Maybe you’ll be praying for me in a time where I cease.  Maybe I fell asleep, got caught up in the day to day mess, or maybe I am even just feeling distant from God.

What’s scary is we can throw out the “I’m praying for you.” so easily, on later to be dismissing it, forgetting to, or just not meaning it at all.  This is a pretty big deal.  Praying for someone and not, could be the difference between unceasing and ceasing.  I know that’s a stretch, but my belief is Jesus put a pretty huge focus on community for a reason.  I do believe, with all of my heart, we were called to community, not to talk the controversy, not to talk about the other person is doing wrong, but to support each other, and help each other grow unceasingly.  I believe a big part of this is prayer.

Unceasingly praying is not something that is easy.  It’s not something to take lightly.  It’s not something to dismiss as, “I’m just not good at prayer.” or, “He never listens anyway.”.  It’s something to work towards, unceasingly, until you are there.  And when you fall, work at it again, until you are there again.

Thoughts?

So, how does one pray unceasingly?  I still don’t know.

Have you ever heard the phrase “Speak it into existence”?  I still am not 100% sure what that means.  But I know this, when I say things enough, it happens.  Especially things like, “Today is going to be a horrible day.” I don’t know that the day is actually horrible, or if that’s what I’ve placed in my mind/heart.

When I repeat a phone number, I memorize it.

So, what do I repeat, with my mouth, or in my mind to count as constant prayer? I don’t know the answer to that question, so I did what I know how to do.  I Googled it.  I simply typed “Jesus Prayer”.  The first result was Wikipedia, so I clicked on it, I found this.  It actually talks about Hesychasm, which I think means silent prayer, or something like that.  Not really sure.  Anyway. Turns out the “Jesus Prayer” is “Κύριε Ιησού Χριστέ, Υιέ του Θεού, ελέησόν με τον αμαρτωλόν” or “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

I started repeating this, whenever I can. (Yesterday)  I still do.  In my mind, mumble it out loud. whatever I can do.  I think the idea I have is, if I repeat this, it will embed itself into my heart. To where, my heartbeat will cry out, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner!”  It seems like a far fetch.  It seems like it’s  a desperate attempt, which is what makes me believe it will work.

Another one I’ve been repeating is simply, “The Lord is my Shepherd.”  Repeating. Repeating, like a drum a rhythm in my body.  The more I repeat it, the more the imagery of that becomes real.  The more Jesus Christ actually being a Shepherd is a reality in my life.  Insane.  The reality shatters my soul.  The idea of declaring that, and that being embedded in my soul is really crazy.  I find myself, in moments of silence, realizing that instead of that song stuck in my head, I may mumble “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” or “The Lord is my Shepherd”.   I can’t say any real change has happened in the past few days, but I can say that I feel a little better.

I can say that, at least, in my mind, I have a prayer, that I try to repeat as much as possible.  My hope is that this prayer, will play in my mind like music enough to move to, and embed itself into my heart….. Unceasingly.

“sometimes it seems that our many words are more an expression of our doubt than of our faith.”
- Henri Nouwen

This hit me hard. It made me think about what I say to people, what I write, and what I say in my heart.

All too often, I can write,  say or think the negative.  I can point out what that church is doing wrong.  I can write about the stupid thing that politician said.  I can think about why my wife did it that way instead of how I would do it.

Maybe I’ve been so fearful of silence, I’ve avoided it. Maybe silence in this world causes an uneasiness for a reason. It’s so closely related to shame, embarrassment, sadness and fear. Maybe reaching the state of silence that Jesus did seems impossible.

Jesus said, “The words I say to you I do not speak myself; it is the father, living in Me, who is doing the work.” (John 14:10) And James says “… The only man who could reach perfection would be someone who never said anything wrong; he would be able to control every part of himself” (James 3:2)

That makes my brain spin. Where does my silence start? My heart? My brain? My tongue?  My guess is my heart. I think if I try to only let God’s words permeate my heart, it’d be nearly impossible for my words to escape my mouth.  How do I do that? How do I not fear silence and solitude? How can I cope with being alone?

Maybe instead of viewing silence as being alone, I can try to view it as being alone with God.

Thoughts?

Wow.  I found this in my draft folder… Honestly, don’t remember writing it, but apparently I wrote it a while ago.  Looks like I may have been thinking about adding references.  I’m not.

Dear American Christians,

Don’t look so surprised, we both knew this has been coming for sometime now.  First, I want to say, it’s not you, it’s us (Meaning me too).  For a long time, I’ve been underwhelmed by the action of people.  We are so interested in forwarding e-mails.  Saying which administration did what, proving out our leftist conspiracies, and our right wing jibber jabber.  We’ve been consumed.

While you send out that e-mail about what the Bush administration failed to do, 6 people died a poverty related death*.   While you forward that e-mail about Barack Obama’s birth certificate, 6 more people died.  While you spend ten minutes arguing with your friend about what the church really needs, 60 people died.  While you spent 20 minutes talking about what that other church is doing, 120 people died. 

If the healthcare bill gets passed, people die.  If the heathcare bill does not get passed, people die. 

What’s sad is, while we’re talking about our God, and how great he is, and what he commands, people are dying asking, “How could God?” or “How can there be a God.”

And we’re arguing over tax dollars.