If you Find it Difficult to Pray, These Tips May Help You to Build a Solid, Stable and Fruitful Prayer Life
Building a prayer life from nothing or rebuilding a prayer life that has crumbled can be difficult to do. There are both natural and spiritual obstacles that get in our way. Time, energy, interest, focus, and desire all come into play when tearing down a prayer life or building one up. Here are some tips to help you build or rebuild a prayer life from the ground up.
• Start small, and build slowly. God is patient. You be patient, too.
• As soon as you wake up, say a prayer before getting out of bed. It can be in our father, or a Hail Mary, or just your own words, which you conclude with the glory be.
• Pray before going to bed. Let that be your last action of the day. And during that prayer time, ask the Lord to help you to be prayerful the next day. Specifically, ask him to help you to be as prayerful as he wants you to be tomorrow. Only tomorrow! Don’t worry or ask him about helping you to become a prayer warrior. Just ask him to help you to pray as well as he wants you to tomorrow. Then in the morning, ask him to help you to pray as you should “today.”
• Talk to God throughout the day. It doesn’t have to follow a schedule; it only has to follow your desire. Talk to him during your morning commute for a minute or two. Or even longer if you desire. Talk to him in these brief moments at random periods throughout the day. It doesn’t have to follow a schedule.
• At some point, start developing a regimen of prayer throughout the day. Designate specific times to pray. Maybe at noon every day, you set aside five minutes to pray. Then maybe after dinner every day. But when you start to become more comfortable with praying, do begin to designate specific prayer times. It will help you to develop the discipline of prayer. Discipline in prayer is extremely important to building a solid prayer life.
• With practice over time, prayer will be more natural to you rather than something foreign that you forcibly inject into your day. That’s when you can begin getting more serious about your prayer life and start to build it up to something beautiful.
• Prayer will always challenge you. Because prayer, at the end of the day, is work. And our fallen nature does not like to work. It prefers to be lazy. Allow yourself to challenge yourself, but don’t kill yourself. If your prayer habits are becoming a strain more than just a challenge, don’t be afraid to ease up a little bit. Remember that you want to be disciplined in your prayer life and that means your prayer life Hass to be something that you can maintain consistently. If you’re killing yourself, you may be setting yourself up to give up. Challenge yourself but don’t kill yourself.
I hope these tips are helpful. When you’re ready to up your game, consider these articles I wrote regarding prayer, types of prayer, and building a “house” of prayer (prayer discipline. They will will advance you in holiness.
Podcasts over at my Substack
Podcast Pray Like a Saint – Meditation, Part 1 (about 18 minutes)
Podcast: Guided Meditation – Meditation, Part 2 (about 25 minutes)
Articles:
Prayer is Power, but Only If You Wield It
Build a House of Prayer – This one is pretty hefty and may be a little demanding for beginners. You decide. Just know that this wasn’t written for people who are building from nothing, it was written for people who have a fairly developed prayer life already.
Ave Maria, Virgo Fidelis!
