E. Glenn Hinson taught me a lot about prayer and devotional practices when I was a seminary student in the early 1980s, but I did not develop a daily practice of prayer then. Now I am praying two or three times a day every day. It started in Sunday School a few months ago…

Ten to twenty of us read and studied Arthur Boers’ book Day by Day These Things We Pray at Oakhurst Baptist Church with retired seminary professor David Rensberger as our leader. Boers calls Christians to prayer practices that were common in past centuries, but relatively unknown outside of monasteries today – praying formally at least twice per day every day.

My practice includes three main parts – reading a daily prayer service to begin and end each day, reading chapters of Scripture, and praying through my personal prayer list.

Daily Prayer Services

I sampled 20 different prayer services over the past few months. I purchased a handful of books and found good resources online. An early favorite was http://divineoffice.org/, a traditional Catholic approach that offers 8 liturgies per day to pray the Divine Office from early in the morning until late at night. The service includes podcasts of each liturgy so you can read the liturgy aloud with a leader, which I liked. I never prayed more than five of the offices in a day, but often prayed two or three.

My current routine is to read Daily Prayers from http://commonprayer.net/ in the morning and Evening Prayer from http://www.missionstclare.com/ at night.

The morning readings are relatively brief as far as prayer books go. They often reflect social justice concerns and tell stories of social justice “saints.”

I frequently sing in the morning because Daily Prayers includes a short song selection. The singing often stirs up emotions for me.

I usually read Evening Prayer in bed. The evening readings are lengthy and written in flowery, religious language. I do not like this approach in the morning, but find it appealing at night. I read only sections of Evening Prayer because it is lengthy. Typically the Opening Sentence, Confession, one Glory Be, and all of the prayers. The topics of prayer vary somewhat from day to day and week to week. A recent day included focus on missions, protection, cities, those who influence public opinion, and the future of the human race.

Evening Prayer highlights a different country of the world and a different Christian denomination each day. Thinking prayerfully about different countries reminds me that God has many more concerns than the people of the country in which I live. The denomination highlighted the day I started had a congregation that meets in the shopping center next to my wife’s business. I had never thought to pray for them before, but did that day.

Scripture

All prayer services include Scripture readings, but I omit them to follow a more comprehensive plan that has me on course to read the Bible through in one year with selections from the OT, NT, Psalms, and Proverbs. Reading the Bible through requires little more than three chapters per day. Sometimes I complete my readings with the Daily Prayers service and sometimes I read them in the middle of the day.

The purpose of reading is to listen for what God might say to me through Scripture today, not to prepare for a discussion or an argument. It is amazing how often God speaks when we read as an act of listening.

My reading plan ignores liturgical seasons and public holidays because I get enough of that from other sources.

I may prepare a more focused reading plan that excludes passages that only a nerdy historian could find spiritually meaningful. I am not suggesting faithful people should never read those passages, but there are passages that deserve more attention than others do.

My Prayer List

I never kept a prayer list before a few months ago, but now have one that spans 11 categories – My Wife, Family, Friends, Ministers, Missions, My Church, Injury or Illness, End of Life, Co-Workers, National Leaders, and Georgia Leaders.

The purpose of my list is to call me to prayer for specific people who are a part of my life or for whom I am in some way responsible. For example, I pray for five specific people in the category of National Leaders because I am a citizen of the United States and live in the state of Georgia. President Barak Obama, Senator Johnny Isakson, Senator David Perdue, Congressman Tom Price, and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Geography assigns me the first four. The reason I include Clarence Thomas is because he is Uncle Clarence to a friend of mine and we met at his niece’s wedding. I often dislike the rulings of Justice Thomas, but liked Uncle Clarence. Having him on my list reminds me that family and friends hold national leaders in great affection and I might like them too if I knew them outside of their office.

I hear many prayer requests in the course of a week. I pray on the spot for many people and do not add them to my prayer list.

I do not pray about legislation, laws, regulations, practices, events, programs etc. I pray for people, mostly people in authority and people who suffer under authority.

Lately there have been around 75 people on my prayer list. This includes 28 family members, 16 politicians, and 11 ministers.

My prayer for some individuals is as simple as calling them to mind briefly. I do not always verbalize specific concerns. I think about prayer as offering up love energy. When I think about someone in the presence of God, I am offering love energy that I trust God to use judiciously as God thinks best.

I avoid giving God advice about what God should do or what God should “make” any specific person do. I try to remember, even when I am outraged about something, that my knowledge and experience is limited. Therefore, I typically pray some variation of “May your kingdom come. May your will be done.”

Why Now?

The author of The Reaffirmation of Prayer, E. Glenn Hinson, was my mentor at Southern Seminary from 1979 to 1982. I loved that particular book and gave dozens of signed copies to family and friends over the years. Some points from the book have survived the past 37 years intact in my mind. Dr. Hinson enveloped me in an understanding of the resources of his own rich prayer life, but my own prayer life remained poverty-stricken.

My mother prayed the rosary daily. I had several moving experiences in prayer as a young minister. I led public prayers. I prayed with people in their homes and hospital rooms. I prayed about critical incidents as they occurred, but never prayed regularly.

In 1993, I bought a morning and evening prayer book from a monastery bookshop where I was on retreat one weekend. I sat in my rocking chair at home and read morning and evening prayers for a few days, but soon stopped because I did not feel that I was worshipping God as I read. It did not help that finding my place in the book was confusing.

My shift to praying two or three times per day immediately after beginning to read Arthur Boers’ book is amazing. There are five reasons that might explain why I have developed a daily practice now at age 58.

  1. God has been calling me and over the past few years, I have been more attentive than I was for a long time.
  2. Day by Day These Things We Pray struck a chord with me. It paints a picture of faithful people praying morning, noon, and night as common practice throughout the Bible and the early years of the church. The book then goes into detail about establishing a regular practice of prayer.
  3. My wife bought a copy of Take Our Moments and our Days: An Anabaptist Prayer Book to go along with our class at church. The book showed me how to practice daily prayer in a way that felt meaningful to me. In addition, I could find my way around it in better than I could the prayer book I bought in 1993.
  4. When I started praying, God spoke to me a lot. I was used to having an experience with God once per decade or maybe every few years. This time, I started having experiences with God frequently. Not every day, but sometimes for days in a row. That had never happened before. I am not making God speak to me by showing up in prayer every day, but maybe I am making me listen and that explains why I am hearing more than I ever heard before.
  5. Since beginning daily prayer, I am kinder, more patient, more giving. I am still impatient, critical, and aloof too, but people are noticing changes in me and engaging with me. I am connecting with people more frequently and deeply than I have before and I think it is because praying regularly makes me a better person. I like these developments and want them to continue. Now, for the first time in my life, I look forward to my prayer times.

You can purchase Day by Day These Things We Pray at http://store.mennomedia.org/Day-by-Day-These-Things-We-Pray-P682.aspx