Focused Prayer. Prayer Time. God Speaking - These seem to be oxymoron's, and yet they are not. We can experience a time of speaking to God and hearing from God during focused prayer. In order to help you overcome ADPD and WMD and experience a more fruitful time of prayer try the following:
1. Make the time and find a place for prayer. Carve out some time during a day and in the week to spend time with God. Find a place or places that allow you some silence and stillness in your life.
2. Start short. Five minutes is a great place to start. If you go over five minutes that is fine. Just start. A good way to start is stat short.
3. Develop a system. You use systems everyday. You have a system for waking in the morning, preparing for the day, progressing through the day, ending the day, etc. You may realize you are using systems, but you are. Developing a system or plan for your prayer life will help you stay focused. Develop a pattern or patterns that help guide you. You can use the acrostic of ACTS = Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication. You can focus on your family, including you, then move to your friends, and then begin to speak to God and hear from God about your daily and weekly schedule. A system I use during the day to help me stay in tune with God is STP = Stop, think, Pray. During the day when I am transitioning from one event to another I will take just a few seconds to stop (pause), think (reflect), and pray (a whisper to God or just seek to listen). STP happens in a matter of seconds and is a simple system.
4. Keep in mind that prayer is about a relationship. Prayer is conversation God. Prayer is communicating with God. God desires to relate to you. He takes pleasure in your time with Him. You do not need any magical words or have to know any big churchey words in order to pray. Just begin to speak to God and He will listen and answer.
5. CHANGE. Change will occur in you life as you begin to pray. Be open to God and allow Him to work in your life as you grow in your relationship with Him and others through prayer.
6. Stay at it. If you fall short of a desired goal or time that you had planned for prayer take a "do over" and give prayer another effort. Ask God to strengthen you. He will and you will begin with a fresh start.
7. Find a partner, a prayer partner, that you can call on a weekly basis and spend time praying a few minutes over the phone. This does not take long, is fairly simple to begin, and yet the "pay off" of praying weekly with a friend will be encouraging to you and the prayer partner.
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