Personal prayer Rhythms

Sanctuary 21, like a number of other components of the worldwide prayer movement build our communities up and out of a relentless rhythm of prayer.

In monastic daily life, throughout history right up to today, disciplined, rhythmical prayer has taken place, often around eight times a day or even more. These prayer gatherings would have specific names such as matins, vespers, and compline. These would mark very specific services that happened at strict times throughout the day and night.

Obviously in the traditional monasteries would involve set liturgies, mostly involving the reading or singing of the psalms, with pre-planned scriptures and prayers included.

This discipline can teach us so much today.

The communities that claim to be a kind of new monasticism, especially the exciting growth of the high street monasteries and prayer communities maybe interpret the way the rhythm is carried out differently, but the discipline remains the same.

Disciplined regular prayer rhythm is a fantastic tool to use for not only community prayer life, but personal prayer life too. It is good to establish a lifestyle of prayer and establishing a personal rhythm has been proven to work throughout Christian history.

This blog post today gives us a little bit of an idea about setting up a personal rhythm. Of course it is only a glimpse from my own personal experience so there is massive scope for your own personal development of a prayer rhythm.

The main thing is that a life built on prayer is likely to be an effective missional life.

So here goes.

Setting the rhythm

Every day at twelve o’clock the bells on Durham Cathedral chime, calling people to communion.

That’s one of the reasons that church bells are for, to signify the hour that worshippers need to go to church. Before electronic communication they were the only way to gather people together.

In all monasteries at the hour appointed to gather to pray the rhythm, the monastic bell is rung to remind the monks and nuns to pray. Today in the UK we do have a wealth of communication tools at our disposal. Mobile phones, tablet computers, landlines, iPods, mainframe computers. For those who haven’t got access or don’t wish to have access to technology, we have diaries, wall planners, whiteboards, and if all else fails? We have post it notes!

If we are to develop a personal rhythm of prayer then we need a monastic bell of some kind!

It’s amazing how those reminders still work. Maybe it’s a challenge to set a personal rhythm right now today?

So a little challenge!

What is your monastic bell? Do you have one to remind you to pray? Maybe you can set an alarm on your phone or other device?

What to pray?

A common difficulty we all come across is what to pray?

You can have a thousand things to pray for but sometimes we go to pray and we find it hard.

Recently I have developed a way of praying that I call templating.

Definitely not a new thing, as many people write prayer lists etc.
But templating is great way to bring alive a personal prayer rhythm.
It involves spending time writing down the crucial things personal to you that need praying for.

Whether it’s for yourself or for others, or indeed a situation.

For instance, recently we have been praying for the wider vision to plant other Sanctuary 21s in other Cities.

The way we decided to construct this specific rhythm was to write out an initial template of prayer directed towards this.

We set it out under four headings.

Thanks

Hopes and dreams

Requests

Mission outcomes

Under these headings we wrote simple prayers. Things that really needed praying for.

We stick to that template and pray it at 10 am every day.

Simply following the template.

Then when we could either see the prayers being answered or situations changed, we simply deleted, changed or added new prayers to the template.

Basically it is a living breathing constantly changing template.

But what it does is keep us focussed and for some reason ultra watchful for answers and moves of God.

Templating is a great way of keeping your personal prayer rhythm sharp and meaningful.

Draw up a template today. Start committing a time of day to pray it and stick firmly to it.

You will be amazed how exciting it can be.

Ways of praying rhythms

Here is a fact for you. We all pray differently.

There are lots of exciting ways of praying rhythms. Templating is one. Being creative, by utilizing the things you like to be creative in. Art, music, dance, whatever floats your dinghy really can be used to definitely float Gods dinghy! Using them in a prayer is a way of cutting through the dryness that can occur when involved in the hard work of maintaining a prayer rhythm.

I don't want to write a big dossier here of ways of praying a prayer rhythm because its futile. The truth is there are untold ways that people connect with God in prayer.

Me?

I just like to get down to business and talk and listen to God.

How to pray Rhythms is up to us as individuals. Using our own characters and ways but not being frightened to step out beyond the comfort barrier to experience new things

Rhythm creates lifestyle

Throughout history, rhythms of prayer have proved effective.

However as important as they are to keep a flow of prayer securely in place, we need to push out beyond the set prayer time into a lifestyle of prayer.

This is very important.

The prayer of the righteous person is powerful and effective. (James 5:13-16)

Righteousness is about relationship with Christ.

If we are not in a living, breathing, 24/7 relationship with Jesus then we will miss out on the righteousness that Jesus offers us through his Holy Spirit living in us.

Which in turn, according to this scripture, will mean our prayer can be none effective?

Prayer is the main communication in our relationship with Jesus.

If we aren’t talking and listening to God?

All the time? Well as much as we can?

We are struggling to be in relationship with him.

So learning to develop a lifestyle of prayer is important.

What do we mean by lifestyle of prayer?

It means we bring every part of our life to Jesus all the time.

Talk to him, listen to him on everything?

It strengthens our relationship with him and our trust levels rise.

We tap into the righteousness of Christ
That makes us ultra- effective in prayer.

These are just little glimpses into some experiences of personal prayer.
The one thing to take today is the importance of earnest prayer or disciplined rhythms of prayer.

In Acts 12 I love that picture of the church earnestly praying for Peter who was imprisoned at the time. Earnestly means with passion and fervour. Those fervent and passionate prayers were pivotal in Peter being spiritually rescued from prison. And a passionate and fervent personal prayer rhythm could be equally pivotal to someone who we are praying for.

I pray today that you will have been encouraged to put prayer first in your life.

And that a rhythm of prayer would flow from your heart direct to God himself.