St. Augustine’s College and Graduate Sunday School Class

May 9th, 2011

• Prayer is a conversation between two people who love each other. “True, whole prayer is nothing but Love” ~St. Augustine

• “My soul clings to you” Ps. 62: 9, “I love you, O God my strength” Ps. 16:2

• Prayer is realizing our NEED for God.

• The book of Psalms is a book of prayers, because it is about King David’s relationship with God, it has ups and downs, praise and worship, elation and fear, doubt, he gets angry with God and then comes back and asks for forgiveness.

• One writer (Elie Wiesel) says: “I quarrel with God, fight with Him, make up with Him, but I am never without Him.”

• This is prayer; a relationship, and relationships take work, effort.

• Having a relationship with Him then means involving Him in the details of my life, as a traveling companion, because he is very interested, he takes pleasure in what I do. “He is a friend with whom I can discuss everything that happens in my life. He shares my joy and my pain, my hopes and fears.” (Coniaris, p. 67) This is how I know and live in His will.

• When we have a good friend that we talk to about everything, we pour all concerns to and tell all our secretes to, we just talk :“Talk together out of the abundance of their heart—without consideration, just what they think.” This is speaking “Heart to Heart” (Coinaris)

Don’t worry about praying “right”, just pray!

God is perfectly capable of handling our frustration and disappointment.

“Lay before Him what is in us, not what ought to be in us.” C.S Lewis

We will discover that by praying, we learn to pray.

Is the prayer your are going to present to God, important and meaningful to me first?http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo6BvfaOu5c

• “For a good and holy life pleasing to God nothing is as important as love. “Love and do whatever you wish, says St. Augustine, because he who truly loves will not wish to do anything which is displeasing to his beloved.” –our relationship with Him then is a love/fear (Reverence/honor) relationship not a legalistic relationship.

• A lot of us have experienced emotions that have lead us to pray with zeal and felt relief and connection with God in that moment.

• But this has not been consistent for us. It has

come and gone, or does come and go. The zeal grows cold.

• We need to make it a labor of love, in order to consistently experience that deep connection with God.

• Labor: discipline, or rule, so that even when we don’t feel like it, we still do it.

• 1 Corinthians 9:27But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.

Learning to Pray• We can’t ever get to experience, those

peak moments in prayers, without having gone through the hills and valleys (and that’s the labor/discipline of prayer).

• Approach prayer with humility, in the beginning it is wise to strive for uneventful prayer experiences: 1 LORD, my heart is not haughty, Nor my eyes lofty. Neither do I concern myself with great matters, Nor with things too profound for me. 2 Surely I have calmed and quieted my soul, Like a weaned child with his mother; Like a weaned child is my soul within me.

~Ps 131:1-2

From Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home by Richard J. Foster

• “In the beginning we are indeed the subject and the center of our prayers. But in God’s time and in God’s way a Copernican revolution takes place in our heart. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, there is a shift in our center of gravity. We pass from thinking of God as part of our life to the realization that we are part of His life. Wondrously and mysteriously God moves from the Periphery of our prayer experience to the center. A conversion of the heart takes place, a transformation of the spirit.” P. 15

• Within this labor, there will be challenges, distracting thoughts, boredom.

• We can train our bodies to develop our emotions; for example bowing (metanias), venerating icons, singing spiritual songs.

• Utilizing the Agpeya, let it not be a stumbling stone to prayer but a tool. Don’t feel obliged to read a full hr. or all the hours, do what you can, being consistent, and add slowly to it, just like you would with a physical work out. ~in collaboration with spiritual father as you would be with a dr. or physical trainer.

Learning to Pray

• Rule (Routine, that is growing with time, use tools such as Agpeya, journal, devotionals, prayer beads, spiritual songs).

• Preparing to Pray: Quiet meditation on a psalm or on one of God’s attributes that then leads to prayer.

• Push ourselves to go a little deeper, a little longer each time.

Learning to Pray

• There is a difference between sticking to our Prayer rule, and praying carelessly, just to check the “I did it” box.

• We need to carve out our time for prayer, as we do for everything else.

• God accepts our prayers for what they are. “In the same way that a small child cannot draw a bad picture so a child of god cannot offer a bad prayer.” ~Richard Foster

Staying Present while in prayer

• How ridiculous is the idea of a man running from the last carriage of the train to the first hoping he’ll arrive to his destination sooner?

• In order to pray, we need to establish ourselves in the present.

• Learn to love silence:Lips, then heart/mind.

Q:“shall I have time to do it all?”A: “ If you do not die first, you will have

time to do it. If you die before it is done, you don’t need to do it.”

In conclusion:• To learn to pray is to pray: having the desire is

the start but this desire needs to be kindled with practice.

• Come to Him with reckless abandon, of simple prayer as you would to a loved friend, without pretense, or worrying about the “right words.”

• Create a discipline/rule of prayer (with the guidance of spiritual father, as you would with a personal trainer for a physical workout).

• Utilize the tools that will help you personally (Agpeya, journal, prayer rope, devotionals).