Everyone loves Top 10 lists so here is a list of some of my favorite practical tools and strategies to help you get started or improve (or start) your prayer life (in no particular order).
Maybe the fire has become a spark. Maybe the emotional aspects of prayer have diminished and it has rather becoming a grueling task to tick off the to-do list. Regardless of whatever season you may be in, there is always a need to rekindle, revamp, and renew prayer.
I always feel a tinge of guilt when my mind suddenly wanders off or my hand goes towards my phone in the middle of prayer. But by God’s mercy and grace, He has led me to different tools that I can use to have a deeper and more meaningful time spent in prayer.
We as a Church know the importance of creating beautiful spaces in which to meet God. But, in this season, many of us are not able to worship in the spaces of our home parishes, and even praying privately in those spaces might look rather different. Making a space to pray at home then becomes all the more important.
If we don’t give God the opportunity to enter into us and change us in prayer, our lives will remain the same. He’s ready to work in our lives, but He gave us free will to choose whether we allow Him to or not. It is our choice whether we receive or reject Him.
Whether you’d like to revamp your prayer routine or don’t have a routine you’ve made your own yet, there are many ways you can work on your prayer life.
A prayer journal is a personal record of your conversations with God. It doesn’t need to have answers. In fact, it can be filled to the brim with purely questions and scattered thoughts, and it’d still be a good thing if it’s directed at the Lord.
The remarkable thing about this type of personal prayer is that it doesn’t just apply to Mary -- we can enter into this type of prayer with God Himself in the person of Jesus.
The thing about our faith is that it is ever-changing and always evolving — that includes our prayer life, too. Sometimes it is in these prayer ruts that we are able to discover new ways to pray and deepen our relationship with God. And sometimes where we find Him is in the most boring, mundane moments in our lives.
