How Could You Pray This Holy Week?

If I were to ask you to define prayer, what would you say?

My immediate thought is to look up definitions of prayer online, but when I take a breath and let my mind wander for just a moment, my past experiences with prayer come rushing in. Does that happen to you too?

I grew up in the Roman Catholic faith and was taught the Lord’s Prayer, also called the Our Father, and the Hail Mary. The prayer that we said before meals was a rote prayer as well. I’m not sure if I truly understood the value and power of prayer at that time. Now that I’m in my 40s I see prayer in a new, deeper way.

When I serve in the children’s classroom at our church, I try to shine a light onto the beauty of prayer for the two and three-year-old boys and girls. Prayer is so multi-faceted that, I admit, it’s hard to show the children all that it can be when their attention spans often last about four minutes!

Prayer is a time of acknowledging God’s greatness, confessing our sins, thanking Him for blessings and goodness, and asking Him to provide for our needs.

Often we teach children to bow their heads and fold their hands, but that might not be the best way for each child. It might even be limiting their understanding of prayer!

Would it make more sense to have children kneel down when they worship God and recognize His greatness?
Then could we ask them to bow their heads when they confess their sins or mistakes?
Some children may want to dance or twirl in a moment when they thank Him for all the good things in their lives!
Perhaps we could then have them bow their heads and put their hands on their hearts while they ask Him to provide them with what He knows they truly need.

So if this is how I would like to teach the children to pray, how much more can you as an adult deepen your prayer life?

We are less than a week away from the most significant holiday of the Christian faith! For the past month I have been pushing myself, and hopefully you, to focus on God’s place in our lives.

We’ve learned about:

preparing our hearts
the history of Ash Wednesday
the number forty
fasting
testing God
idols (!)
worshiping God
trusting God

As the children’s pastor at one of our past churches said, “Praying is talking to God.”

So how would you talk to the creator of the universe? How would you address the savior of your soul? What would you say to Him to acknowledge your shortcomings and mistakes?

When you come to God, do you just ask for help? I hate to say it, but that is how I used to pray.

There is nothing wrong with asking God for help, but when that is all you say to Him, you have lost sight of who He is in relation to you.

There will always be so much to learn, and I think prayer is one of the points that needs to be delved into again and again. As we grow in our faith and knowledge, we want to learn how to pray because it is part of how we grow our relationship with our Heavenly Father. My mind just went to the book of Hebrews where it says, “By now you should have been teachers, but once again you need to be taught the simplest things about what God has said. You need milk instead of solid food. People who live on milk are like babies who don't really know what is right. Solid food is for mature people who have been trained to know right from wrong” (Hebrews 5:12-14 CEV).

Hear me say this next point!

I am not calling you an immature person or a baby.

I am asking you to think about how you speak to the Father, the Firstborn, and the Holy Spirit. We may be old enough to be teachers, but our maturity within the family of God does not always coincide with our age. I think I was in my mid-thirties when I learned about how to pray.

If you don’t have a regular time of prayer, then I hope that you will make a real effort to change that this week. ♥️

Now I’ll say something about prayer that I need to be reminded of too.
Prayer is not just talking to God, but also listening to God.

Often, the best part of my day is when I can read the Bible. Before I start, I ask the Holy Spirit to speak through the Word that has been given to each of us. I want to learn more about God, and the best way I know to do that is through slowly reading His Word. When I am open to that, I can see more of who God was, who God is, and who God will be forevermore.

Listening to God through His Word is a joy for me!
This may be because I have always been a reader.

Listening to God through silence is hard for me!
My mind is almost always racing with tasks that need to be completed, thoughts of my children, or the next appointment that has to be kept. When it comes to just being quiet and waiting on God’s voice, I am one of the infants who is still drinking milk rather than the solid food that the author of Hebrews brought up.

So since we are less than a week away from Resurrection Sunday, I am challenging you to speak to and listen to our Lord in a way that honors His greatness and power!