Today (good news in part!), "meditating" is in vogue. 25 years back, you would've been considered a nut to do it. Now it's addressed as something of great health, mentally and spiritually, for a person to do. Well, OK! Great! Scripture speaks of meditating, and, it comes not from a cultural change from five years back, but from at least about 1050 B.C. King David of Israel at that time spoke of meditating on God’s law. We see this, for instance, in Psalm 119:97 ("Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long.”) and in Psalm 1:1-2 (Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is i
6. When to pray. First, you might want to set a time (you don’t have to; a “prayer time” is not commanded in the Bible, as it is in the Koran, for instance). If you do set a time, you could say “some time in the morning,” “when I first get up before I do anything else,” “before I sit down for breakfast,” or just “some time today.” Start with (and maybe stay with forever) five minutes. Literally have a timer set (use your phone’s clock timer) and don’t allow yourself over the five minutes. When it rings at the end of five minutes, you’re done. That’s the rule. Why five minutes? As with physical exercise, you don’t want to set such a big goal ("an hour every day”) that you do it for the
5. How to pray. My recommendation for you on the “how do I pray?” front is to take the Lord’s prayer—use Matthew 6:9ff (“ff” means whatever verses follow that are on the same subject). Print it out. When you do And please notice in the Lord’s Prayer how little is about us and our grocery list of requests. That list of requests we might have is OK (it fits under “daily bread”), but most of the Lord's Prayer is focused on God, the kingdom of His Son, and our forgiving others. Praying with the Lord’s Prayer in front of you as your guide will help to focus your prayer much more on thanks and praise to the Lord and things on His agenda (His Son’s kingdom) than on “help me to have a good day”
If you're like me (and every other Christian), you often feel guilty about prayer. Who can ever pray enough? It's like evangelism. I can always do more. Guilt, guilt, guilt. From the get-go, the Church in America and elsewhere makes us feel guilty. Here's how: they talk about the believer (and presumably you!) having "a prayer life." Some believers will ask you about yours. There begins the guilt. Here begin a few thoughts to help you to do what you want to do, but never seem to--pray. You'll lose the guilt, too! 1. Shrug it off. First of all, if someone asks you about your "prayer life" or speaks about how you and all Christians should have one, shrug it off. Really. 2. No set
