Hello Hello,
How is your day going?
Today I want to talk about prayer.
Have you ever had moments that deep down you know you should be praying or studying the word of God but your body is not in the mood? The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak times?
One day as I was in bed, going back and forth between sleep (or something else) versus prayer, low-key wishing prayer cloak will fall on me, I reminded myself that if I actually put some things in place, I was more likely than not to get gingered to pray. So rather than singing “prayer fall on me” in one corner of my mind, I better set myself up to pray.
In this post, I will be sharing the actions I take usually to bring my body up to speed with praying.
1. Play music: This is probably my biggest hack. In my case, I have found that instrumentals work a lot for me and I use Dappy T keys (https://youtu.be/66USuf9BaYc) for the most part because I know quite a number of the songs he plays and I enjoy that it is voiceless. I bounce between singing along, praying or just humming and it helps me tune out the distractions and focus solely on God. Another thing that works for me in this regard, is playing the particular song or songs that minister to me at that time. Recently it has been I desire nothing else/ The one I love by Chingtok Ishaku. I focus on the lyrics as I sing these songs and they help me tune my attention to God.
2. Audio recordings of prayer: I have some recorded prayers/confessions on my phone so I sometimes play them and just hearing myself pray, I picture myself back in that zone I was when I was making the declarations and makes it easier for me to start praying at that point. I also have audio confessions/prayers by Debola Deji-Kurunmi that I use (usually when I am commuting to work). You can find some here I believe https://adebolakurunmi.com/. In addition, I also have written confessions/prayers and I read them out and go from there.
3. Scriptures: I just open my bible to a favorite scripture or remind of a scripture I love so much and meditate on it for a bit and my body starts to align.
4. Take a shower: Some days, I actually just push myself to get up and go take a shower or brush my teeth and wash my face. This gets me up and doing and the going back to sleep risk is greatly reduced. Then I proceed to quiet down
5. I talk to myself. It can go like this – ” I understand that you want to sleep more or watch Tv but your heart is calling you to pray. We can’t be living like this and allowing the body to have its way in matters like this. Oya, turn off the TV or go take a shower.”
6. I set a timer to help me focus. It is a modification of the Pomodoro technique. This one is also my top productivity hack. My mind can be flying all over but doing this and looking forward to the timer ringing (as reward) helps me. Note it does not mean that if the timer goes off and I still want to pray, then I will just stop because timer rang. This just helps me at the beginning to keep focus.
7. Read or Listen to a Spiritual material: Basically read a devotional, continue with a faith book I am currently reading or listen to a sermon for a bit to kickstart me.
8. Turn off Internet connection: All these notifications, messages etc can be distracting. So usually, a night before I turn off my internet connection so that when I wake up there is nothing coming at me like “open me, open me.” I am able to pause and focus on Jesus.
9. Understanding prayer as a conversation: This one helps me remember that prayer is me conversing with God. He is very aware on my humanity and so I can just be like Lord, today or right now, I do not feel like praying but I know I must pray so help me Lord and this is legit prayer too. I sometimes write down my prayers too
10. Prayer schedule: I have tried to group what to pray about on different days of the week. It is not necessarily set in stone but it helps as a guide whenever I am not sure of what to pray and what to pray about. Also praying with other people helps.
Most importantly, ask the Holy Spirit to help you but also remember prayer will not just fall on you. You will need to put some things in place.
What do you do when you don’t feel like praying?
How do you get yourself in the mood?
Share with me in the comments.
Written by Temiloluwa Durojaiye
Culled from www.temidimples.com