I love to read the Bible. Because I enjoy it so much, there’s no danger that I’ll skip my daily time in God’s Word. And, in fact, since I began having quiet times again, more than three years ago, I’ve kept up a consistent pattern of spending time in the Scriptures every morning, Monday through Saturday, with a weekly review on Saturday evening. Nor have I missed a single day of the longer Scripture readings – at least a chapter a day – that I do in order to get the big picture.
Prayer is a different matter. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve determined to keep a scheduled daily prayer time, only to have it fizzle out after a couple of weeks. The problem is, it’s gets boring. With the Bible, I don’t read the same passage every day. But with prayer, I just had my list of people and requests that I would repeat day after day. That gets old fast. More than that, it felt like I was just wasting God’s time, as well as mine, repeating requests that he’d already heard from me dozens of times. With that as my experience, it’s not surprising that my prayer time would gradually end up being used for something else, until I would finally give up. Usually it would then take several months before I felt guilty enough to try again.
It wasn’t even that I was trying to avoid God’s presence. Just the opposite, in fact. I wanted that very much. And after I read Brother Lawrence’s The Practice of the Presence of God I began actively trying to do what he had recommended; namely, carrying on an extended conversation with God as I went about my daily activities, and in that way to “pray continually.” (1 Thessalonians 5:17) That works well if I’m praying for immediate, moment-by-moment concerns, but I still couldn’t keep up a designated prayer time or a regular list of people to consistently pray for. The problem, it appeared, was not my desire, but my methods.
Ironically, during the short periods that I was praying regularly, I saw some pretty incredible answers. But even knowing that God heard my prayers, I could never seem to stick with them. Somehow, I was taking something incredible and exciting, and making it lifeless and boring. And so, taking time to pray would always end up falling off the bottom of my list of priorities.
Walking with God – Literally
A little over a year ago, this pattern of starting with great intentions but then giving up changed. It happened this way: One evening, during a class at my church, we were all encouraged to do a prayer walk around our own neighborhoods. I take our dog Moxie for a walk every morning, so it occurred to me that I could combine the two and do prayer walks with the dog.
I started off praying for my neighbors, asking God to make my community an outpost of his kingdom. Almost immediately I started meeting people in the neighborhood that I had not previously met (at the time, we’d only been living there for about a year). That wasn’t a problem, though; I can greet people, and even have a conversation if they’re willing, then go right back to praying when I walk on. And, somehow, the physical activity of walking while I was praying made it much easier to stay engaged and interested. By the end of the first week of prayer dogwalks, I knew I had hit onto something. Since then I have had no trouble maintaining a daily prayer time. As far as I can tell, the thing that made the difference was that I simply stopped trying to always pray in my bedroom with my eyes closed, and took it outside.
Listening and Responding
That’s how it started, but within just a few weeks the prayer dogwalks began to evolve into something more. I began spending more and more time as I walked praising God for things I encountered; the weather, the view of the mountains in the distance, the beauty of the plants in people’s yards. And thanking him for everyone I got to talk to, even if all I did was exchange greetings with them.
I also found myself thinking more about God’s word. You see, the first thing I do every morning is spend half an hour or so in the Scriptures, focusing on one passage, and meditating and writing about what I’m seeing there. The very next thing on my schedule is my prayer dogwalk, and I can use the first part of the walk to pray about what I’ve just read. As a result I often end up with a deeper understanding of that passage of Scripture. Many times also I’ve gotten a strong sense that what I was seeing in God’s word wasn’t intended for me only, but was something to share with other people. That was a major factor leading tothe decision to set up Square Holes. And since I’ve been building this website, I’ve spent a good amount of time on dogwalks praying about what I’m writing.
Listening has become a big part of my prayer dogwalks as well. I’ve discovered that one of the best, and safest, ways to learn to hear God’s voice is to pay attention to promptings about what to pray. Sometimes I’ll get a strong sense that I need to pray for something that I know from the Sciptures is God’s will, but that it hadn’t previously occurred to me to pray for. For example, I’ve started praying for the restoration of unity in the church all over the world. Other times, the prompting is for something that I don’t know for sure is his will but might be, such as that some person be blessed in a particular way. Since God is not bound to do anything he does not choose to do, there’s no danger I can do harm in praying that way, even if I might have been wrong about what the Holy Spirit was saying.
Accountability Helps
About six months ago, a new dimension was added to my prayer dogwalks; a prayer list. One weekend, at a conference, I realized that if I pray for my phone contacts, I could easily follow up by sending the people I pray for a quick text to encourage them. I actually hesitated to do this, though, because I have a bad habit of second-guessing myself. I wasn’t sure if my real reason for sending texts would be to bless others or to make myself look more spiritual. After more prayer, and still with some trepidation, I decided to go ahead. When I did that, I learned two important things: first, that people really do appreciate getting a text telling them that someone is praying for them, and second, sending the texts provided accountability for me, which helps me stay faithful in praying for the people on my list.
I pray for every person on my phone contacts list, but to keep from being overwhelmed, I pray for just a few of them each day. It takes me about two weeks to go through the entire list. Not all of my contacts are Christians, and I’m careful to only send “I’m praying for you” texts to those people whom I don’t think will be weirded out by them. And, of course, I decided right at the start that I would stop texting anyone who asks me to, but so far no one has.
So that’s where I am with my daily prayer times. Like my time in the Scriptures, I do this every morning, Monday through Saturday. Rather than a boring duty, my prayer time is now something I enjoy and look forward to each morning. And now that I have this as a regular practice, on those days when the weather doesn’t permit a dogwalk, or when I have some urgent, early morning appointment, I can make time to pray later in the day without getting bored or discouraged, because I know that it’s only a temporary expedient until I can get back to my regular prayer time.
This practice may not be for everyone. God created us as individuals, and he meets us as individuals. You should organize your own prayer time in whatever way helps you stay engaged and faithful. But if what you’re doing just isn’t working, like it wasn’t for me, why not try a daily prayer walk, with or without a dog? It might be just the change you need to make prayer a more consistent, and more exciting, part of your life.