1 - Prayer - The first step

DISCIPLESHIP:

        BASICS ONE:

               PRAYER - THE FIRST STEP

In some way you have been drawn to follow Jesus. It is just like you were in Jesus’ time and Jesus himself invites you personally to follow him.

What do you think is the ‘good news’ Jesus is proclaiming?

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What do you think it means by ‘repent’?

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God is always near to us, it is us who need to come to him. We come to him by becoming like him.

What do you think God is like?

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The clearest and most profound quality of God is Love. God is love. Love is expressed in mercy, forgiveness, seeking the best for the other, selflessness…. The list can go on and on. God is all these things and more. God is also perfect joy. God wants to share his joy with us. As we become more like him, we experience more of his everlasting joy as well.

We can’t be like God in our own strength. God is so far above us, the very thought is a kind of joke. But God in his love wants to share all that he is with us, if we let him. God does all his work through Jesus. By responding to Jesus we let God do his work in us. God works fast, it is us who are slow. We can’t do it all at once. We do it step by step.

There is a saying which is very useful in the spiritual journey.

Once we set out for Jesus, we are on the right path. It is then a matter of keeping on going. Trying too hard is just as bad as trying too little. Keeping a steady pace is the key to real spiritual growth. We do this by working on some aspect of the spiritual life at a time and gradually build up the spiritual habits we need, that will transform us, through God’s grace, to be more like him.

The first habit we must develop is prayer.

Do you pray? How do you pray?

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There are many ways to pray, but what is important is to make a regular time to pray and to build it up to 15minutes a day. Start with 5minutes a day for the first week, then 10minutes a day for the second then 15 minutes a day for the third and keep it there for a while. If you want to do more initially, that is OK, but never more than 15 minutes of prayer. If you do too much too soon, you will find it hard to keep up the practice.

Choose a time to pray, a place to pray and a method.

The time should be when you are at your best. If this is the morning, then use the morning, if it is late in the day, then use a later time. You should plan it when you will not be distracted.

The place should be where you feel comfortable and you have easy access to. Place a religious picture near your bed to remind you to pray. So if you forget by the end of the day, the picture will remind you to just spend 5 minutes in prayer.

The method. When starting we will use a simple method.

1)       Be aware that you are in God’s presence and that this is now your prayer time. This can be simply achieved by making the sign of the cross, or stopping and just thinking to yourself, “I am now praying” or some thing similar.

2)      You could use part of the rosary. Or read the gospel. Start with Mark’s Gospel and read no more than 2 chapters. Read it slowing thinking about what it is saying. Read over it several times slowly.

3)       Pray for yourself, ie your needs and pray for the needs of others you know.

4)      Finish with the Our Father, and the sign of the cross if you like.

 Initially, it will seem a long time, but as you get use to it, it will seem to go past quicker at times.

 If you forget to pray, just spend 5 minutes in prayer, with either a decade of a rosary or a small passage of scripture.

Each time you pray, you are sowing the ‘act’ of prayer. By keeping it up, it will become a habit. This is your goal for now, to develop the daily habit of prayer.