a

Table of Contents
Chapter One

Why This Book?
What This Book is Not
References to God

Chapter Two

 

Sometimes Even Spiritual People Don't Pray

 

Chapter Three

 

What is Powerful Positive Prayer?
Types of Prayer

 

Chapter Four

 

Before We Start
How, When and Where to Pray

 

Chapter Five

 

The Tools of Prayer

 

Chapter Six

 

Step One – Breathe

 

Chapter Seven

 

Step Two – Who Are You Praying To?

 

Chapter Eight

 

Step Three – Who Are You?

 

Chapter Nine

 

Step Four – What Are You Praying About?

 

Chapter Ten

 

Step Five – Give Thanks

 

Chapter Eleven

 

Step Six – Let Go and Let God

 

Chapter Twelve

 

Step Seven – Let it Go, Again and Again

 

Chapter Thirteen

 

I'm so grateful for you!
Recommended Reading

 

a^Chapter One

 

Why This Book?

It seems like prayer should be simple. It's a uniquely personal process unlike anything else. It's not just thinking, it's communicating. It can be like a conversation, but it's internal. So, if it's personal and intimate, and if it is unique to each person, why would anyone consider writing what is basically a “how to” book about prayer?

Good question.

Like many people, there was a time in my life when prayer was hard. I just couldn't seem to connect with God. I felt isolated and frustrated. I knew this internal communication was possible, because I'dexperienced it before.

That was fortunate, because if I hadn't done it before, I may have given up. I knew I could achieve that level of personal connection with God again, but I had either forgotten howto do it during the dark days in my life, or (the unthinkable) God had forsaken meduring those days.

When I prayed, it wasn't from a place of confidence. I'dfallen away from my spiritual life. Don't get mewrong -- it's not like I was living on the street with a needle in my arm. I just forgot, somehow.

I don't know how someone could forget one of the most important relationships in her life, but I did. When I realized what I'd done, I felt ashamed. I thought God would have turned His back on me.

When I prayed, it was hard to focus because of my feelings of remorse. I couldn't ask for anything, not even for strength or guidance because I would be interrupted with thoughts like, “Who areyou to ask God for anything? Wherehave you been lately?”

When I prayed I was coming from a mindset of lack. I had lost quite a bit, spiritually, andrealizing it made my life seem bleak. An attitude like that made prayer very complicated. Howcould I ask for more when I was not in appreciation of what I already had?

I couldn't stop thinking about what Ihad lost. I couldn't stop obsessing about the subject of my prayers. First the prayers were ineffective because of so much static in my mind, and then I couldn't let them go in faith because I didn't trust them. They didn't feel right.

It was as if my prayers floated around somewhere in a dark corner of the ceiling, never making it out to God. I very clearly remember having that image in my mind – all my impotent prayers drifting around in my house like ghosts. I even had the thought that maybe if I sat next to the fireplace when I prayed, my prayer would go up the chimneyand God might be able to find it.

That's how downright crazy my thoughts got during that difficult time. It was that fireplace idea that snapped me out of it. I mean, if I really thought that some pink insulation and tar paper shingles could inhibit communication with the Infinite, I needed to wake up!

It was time to approach my problem in a practical, not emotional, way.

At the time I was working and taking college courses. I was raising my son alone and life was pretty lonely. I really needed my relationship with God during those days.

A constant theme in my life during this period – in work, school and child-rearing -- were the concepts of “best practices” and “effective methods.” I came up with the idea to analyze how I was praying and then come up with a better way – an effective method.

I needed a spark, something to ignite my passion for spirituality again. If I couldn't pray, I could at least study the concept of prayer. If my prayers weren't working, I needed to figure out why and then fix the problem. My prayer project gave me a sense of purpose and hope. And, it worked.

What This Book is Not

This book is not based on the science of prayer. I am not going to research scientific studies or cite them. If you are even the slightest bit interested in prayer, you've heard of the stories of prayer's effectiveness in self-healing, healing others, reducing stress, lowering cholesterol, curing heart disease and depression – even helping plants grow faster!

It is also not my goal to help you pray so I can then guilt you into using your prayer skills for the betterment of mankind! You know what is best for you and your life. You will do what you are inspired to do, whether there is scientific proof or not, right?

I'm truly not interested in arguing with skeptics. I know what prayer does for me. I believe I see results in my life and that's good enough for me.

Somehow I have the feeling that the people who, like you, chose to purchase this book don't give a fuzzy fig what someone with a white coat and a clipboard, tells them about prayer. There's lots of things I'd like to consult a person like that about, but prayer is not one of them.

I am also not writing this book to convince you that you should pray, but rather to show you one way to pray that I believe to be powerful. If there's any information here that helps you, I'm happy.

References to God

In the writing of this book, I have chosen to use the word “God” to represent...well, God! I know many people who write about spiritual issues use replacement names for God such as “Source,” or “Light,” or “Higher Power.”

I don't have a problem with those terms. Infact, they can be useful to round out our mental conception of God and help remind of of God's characteristics. God is the Source of everything, our Light in the darkness and an infinitely wise Guiding Presence. But to be honest, I've never been comfortable using them. I wanted to be comfortable while writing and not struggle over names.

Please feel free to use/fill in/replace whatever words are comfortable for you. I have no judgment about the use of them. I just can't comfortably have a conversation with you if I can't use the words that feel best to me.

Links and Book References

At the end of each chapter Ihave includeda section with links to books or websites that might help you study more deeply about the topics I discuss. You may not wish to interrupt your reading to follow those links, which is understandable.

That's okay, because every reference will be collected in a “recommended reading” section at the end so they will be together in one convenient spot foryou. The purpose of putting the links at the endof the chapter is to let you know that those particular books or sites relate to something in that chapter.

b

Sometimes Even Spiritual People Don't Pray

It's true. Even that lovely older lady who always sits in the third pew on Sunday goes through times when she doesn't pray. For all we know, she may never have developed a personal prayer practice and relied solely on guided prayer in church for her experience of prayer.

Life is constantly changing. Our faith andour discipline are occasionally challenged. So, why would somebody who is obviously steeped in a spiritual environment fail to pray during the toughest times of her life? It could be one of many, many reasons:

_Ï Loss of faith
_Ï Frustration about unanswered prayers
_Ï Being distracted or overwhelmed during difficult times

All of these things can lead to a breakdown in prayer. Many people never even consider personal prayer. They just go through the motions every Sunday. So, look at you! See how far you are ahead of the crowd?

If you haven't prayed for a long time, or ever, it's okay. Please don't believe that God will punish you for your failure to pray, whether you've been taught that He would or not. It's hard to think of a less productive belief.

Yes, we should take good care of our relationship with Godand give Him and our prayer time the respect they deserve. If you have failed to do that for a week or a year, just get started again.

Let God know that you are grateful for His patience during your absence.

But back to the topic at hand, often wefail to return to a practice of prayer after an absence because we tend to personify God – or think of Him in human terms. This mistake applies to nearly every one of the reasons why sometimes even spiritual peopledon't pray. Let me share a few of them with you.

God is Busy

God is Infinite. He doesn't wear a wristwatch orcarry around a day planner. Time means nothing to the Infinite. He is with you in every moment anyway, so you might as well pause to have a little visit with Him.

We are miraculous beings, but the idea of something that has no beginning and no end is pretty hard for us to comprehend. I struggle with it all the time.

God Has Bigger Problems to Deal With Than Mine

 

God is Infinite. The size of your problem is nothing to Him. He doesn't delegate smaller problems to middle managers.

 

Size is a characteristic of the physical universe, not God. You aren't going to overload God's server and crash the system if you ask his help.

 

God is Probably Mad at Me

 

God is Infinite. Infinite love, patience and acceptance. And besides, even if He was mad at you, He's probably over it by now!

What sounds more like the truth is, “I'm mad at myself and I can't imagine how God, the onlyOne besides me who knows the whole truth about my actions, wouldn't be mad at me too.

God Doesn't Know Me

God is Infinite. There is no blade of grass on this planet that God isn't intimately familiar with. He lives within the heart of every person on this planet, including you. He lives within every person even if they have never heard of Him, or have rejected Him.

He is Infinite and cannot be separated from even a single atomor molecule of matter or energy in this Universe. God knows you. You are born of Him and he loves you.

God is Disappointed in Me

Yes, here it is again. God is Infinite – infinite love, patience and understanding. Disappointment is a human experience. You are transposing your own feelings onto God. Your mother may be disappointedin you, but God is not! You may be disappointedin yourself, but how will you ever forgive yourself and be healed if you don't pray?

God Ignores Me

Again, that is a human characteristic. Petty childishness and cruel arrogance are not in alignment with an Infinite Being with an infinite supply of love and kindness. If you use this book to develop your prayer practice and have faith that it will work, you will no longer be able to believe that God ever would or ever did ignore you.

I Feel Guilty Because I Haven't Prayed in So Long

 

Okay. it's one thing to feel guilty because youhaven't called your grandmother as often as you should, but, God is Infinite. He doesn't have limited time. He's not going to cut you out of the will.

Be careful with personification. If it helps you to feel closer to God, fine. If the personified God in your mind keeps acting like hormonal teenager, maybe you need a different image.

Time means nothing. Love means everything. Guilt is less than useless, it is corrosive. Remember, you cannot feel guilty enough to restore your relationship with God.

I have a question foryou: why don't you know how wonderful you are? Even with your every failure, disappointment and mistake, you are still worthy to step up to God's figurative doorstep and knock. The door will be opened and God will be smiling, happy to see you. If you don't think He already has, it's because you've been too busy with your head down scuffing the dirt with your toe.

Personifying God – giving Him human characteristics – is tough. It's hard to relate to God if we can't imagine Him as being like us. It's perfectly natural for us to have such an image of God, and I don't believe it to be damaging in any way – unless we start to overlay our negative human emotions and pettiness on Him.

Does it seem right to you that God would fold his arms and turn his back on you? No. That's a punishing behavior used by people.

How about pouting? Canyou picture the Almighty with his lower lip slightly protruding because you haven't been praying enough? I don't think so. That's a passive-aggressive tactic used by people in order to manipulate others. It all seems pretty silly when you imagine it that way.

Unfortunately, it's all too easy for most of us to imagine a wrathful God – a God wrapped in a fierce wind of fury, striking down sinners and scattering plagues across the landto punish us for our failures. This is just another personification.

Have you ever been consumed by rage? While you know it's incredibly destructive to your mind and body in the long run, right down to the cellular level.

Personification is often how we can best put God's power into context for our own limited minds and experience. It's not the onlyway to envision God, though.

Suggested Reading

 

Disappointment With God by Phillip Yancy

^{Chapter Three}d

What is Powerful Positive Prayer?

 

I'd like to spend a couple of pages discussing what I mean when I talk about Powerful Positive Prayer.

If you had come up with this method on your own, which you may have, you probably wouldn't bother to give it a name. Neither would I, normally. When I decided to write it down, then decided to write a book about it, I knew I needed to create a name for it. Truthfully, it didn't take me long.

Powerful Positive Prayer is exactly what this process is for me. It is powerful because it will re-birth your conversation with God. That conversation will give you more personal power in your daily life. It is a powerful process and it helps you to feel more powerful.

I think of it as positive because the framework for my prayer is there. When you pray to ask God's help, you will feel confident that your prayer will be answered because of the way you will ask. That part will become clear when you get to the prayer method chapter.

So, let's break it down a little bit:

 

Powerful

 

Isn't all prayer powerful? Yes, I believe so. I don't think you have to read a single book on prayer in order for your prayer to be powerful.

When I use the word “powerful” I'mnot necessarily talking about effectiveness. It's not about how effective your prayer is in terms of visible results or whether you get what you pray for. It's about the power inside of you – the power of your personal relationship with God.

It's strange. People who have enjoyed a long marriage know that a strong, healthy relationship is the product of hard work. Young people who are in love for the first timewill say, “There is nothing in heaven or earth that could tear us apart.” Things are wonderful and magical until someone loses a job, gets veryill or begins to want different things in life.

We are sort of youthful and idealistic when we assume our relationship with God should always be easy. Especially when God is the one constant, reliable, unwavering truth in our lives. We, however, are not unchanging. We're human.

So, powerful prayer is about strengthening or empowering that line of communication with God. When you do, you will feel it more, know it better and trust it implicitly.

Positive

 

Upbeat? Assured? Effective? Charged up? Certain? Optimistic? Yes and yes and yes. All of the above.

Positive prayer is about asking for what you need and feeling okay about asking. It is about knowing your prayer was already answered before you even asked. It's about knowing the act of prayer is a positive force in the world around you and even in the world you can't see with your eyes. It's about lifting your mind and spirit to a greater resonance and understanding which isn't possible when we blindly stumble through our days without turning on our guidance system.

It means prayer without desperation, without lack, without fear. It means having faith in your relationship with God and being grateful for the blessings in your life right now. It is understanding that you are God's beloved child and that he loves you beyond your knowing.

Man, I loved writing this section, because you are, you know? You are powerful and you are loved.

 

That is positive prayer.

 

Prayer

Prayers...I've gotta million of 'em. Well, a few anyway. Since there's not much more for me to say about prayer other than it is what we have named our communication with God, I decided to create a list of the different types of prayer. This is just more for fun than anything else. How many of these types of prayer have you used?

Types of Prayer

When I first began my “prayer project,” the first thing I focused on was the different types of prayer. I'm not sure how I even came up with the idea of different types of prayer, except I know that I had heard the term “prayer of petition” before. Once I began to think about it, I was surprised to realize how many ways we can pray.

Petition Prayer

Petition prayers are when we ask God for something specific. Please grant me strength during this difficult time...Please give me clarity in my relationships...Please let me win the lotto this Saturday...

There's really nothing wrong with a petition prayer. Well, okay, maybe praying to win the lotto is missing the point, but it's okay to ask God for things. God may or may not give them to you, and he may give you something better than you could ever imagine on your own. Petition prayers can help us to identify what we want. We feel we can tell God our needs when we can't tell anyone else. We may rise up from a petition prayer and feel a greater sense of clarity and purpose.

Unfocused Prayer

We've all done this at some time or another, haven't we? An unfocused prayer is simply, God, please...help! When we are in a scary or traumatic situation, an unfocused plea for help may be all we're capable of doing. These prayers in our times of greatest need can be very powerful. They are backed by strong emotion and blast through any doubt or insecurity we may have when praying. The need is not unfocused, just the ability to know what we need. We only know we want God's help.

The ability to know what we want or even define the problem is unfocused, but not the laser-like connection to God.

 

A prayer like this may produce amazing miracles in your life it if is coming from strong emotion and a sense of urgency.

 

Angry Prayer

Yikes! Who wants to admit to being angry with God? Sometimes we don't understand why God “lets” a tragedy happen – like the senseless death of someone young and full of potential. I will admit to a prayer like this after the tsunami in 2004.

About all an angry prayer can accomplish is the venting of strong emotions and frustrations. They are simply a roaring, window-shattering, “Why?” Don't you think God understands andforgives our emotions – and that God can “take it” when we question him?

Forgiveness Prayer

Forgiveness is powerful, whether we are asking God to forgive us or asking for the ability to forgive someone else. Both provide us with solace, which is pretty hard to beat.

A forgiveness prayer can be tough if we don't believe we deserve it or if we aren't ready to grant it.

 

Pleading Prayer

This is similar to petition prayer. The difference is that pleading prayer comes when you are fixated on a specific outcome and will not accept any alternative.

Please, please, God, let Harold fall in love with me.

It leaves no room for God to show you that Harold is not the one for you. It shuts down the entire world of wonderful possibilities. It is the prayer of obsession and micro-management. It is a prayer that comes from a lack of trust in God's good will.

Bargaining Prayer

 

This is the first-time drinker's prayer. Dear God, if you get me through this night, I swear I will never drink again!

We need to have absolutes in our lives and to measure results. Someone might think, “I only have to promise six months of church to get Johnny a job, but it will take six months of church and 90 days' worth of volunteer work at the nursing home to cure Aunt Lydia's pneumonia.”

There is something disturbing to me about this kind of prayer, but I know it must happen allthe time. It seems more like a bargain with the godfather than a prayer to God.

Conversation Prayer

 

I'd be willing to bet money, if I was a betting kind of gal, that more people pray this way than any other.

 

It's simply thinking a question to God and listening for the answer. It can be done while you're doing the dishes or mowing the lawn.

I believe this to be the ultimate goal of a prayer practice. No bargaining, no begging, no sniveling, just a genuine conversation. It may take time to develop, but if you continue to work at it, this will probably be your result.

You may or may not converse with God in your mind and in words. You might pray and then find unexpected answers to your prayer in many disguises, like surprise gifts. That is no less a conversation with God than words inside your head.

Suggested Reading

The Power of Simple Prayer: How to Talk with God about Everything
by Joyce Meyer

The Energy of Prayer: How to Deepen Your Spiritual Practice by Thich Nhat Hanh and Larry Dossey

 

Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home by Richard J. Foster

^{Chapter Four}e

Before We Start

 

Before we talk about the Powerful Positive Prayer method, let's quickly cover a couple of other ideas.

 

Ritual

 

Prayer is a ritual in itself. It is sacred, even if you are able to have a quick conversational prayer with God.

However, I would like you to consider creating a separate and distinct ritual to begin your prayer time. I believe in the power of repetitive practices. Ritual is an exotic term and some people might even think of it as pagan. If the term makes you uncomfortable,let me share a few definitions of “ritual” with you:

an established or prescribed procedure for a religious or other rite a specific act, as hand-washing, performed repetitively to a pathological degree, occurring as a common symptom of obsessive-compulsive neurosis any practice or pattern of behavior regularly performed in a set manner

These are three out of twelve definitions found on dictionary.com. While most of them – like the first example -- mentioned religious practices, none of them mentioned pagan groups.

The second example is also not in line with what I mean when I use the word ritual. Trust me, I do not want anyone to develop obsessive-compulsive disorder because of reading this book!

The example that best fits my use of the word is the third one. You might be surprised about that, since I am advocating you develop a ritual to assist you with your prayer practice. It may seem like the first definition would be more fitting.

The ritual I want you to create doesn't have anything to do with the prayer. The prayer itself is a religious ritual, and you don't have to bang a gong or light a candle to pray. However, the act of doing something like lighting a candle can signal yourbrain that it's time to pray now. It will help you to relax into prayer mode.

What are some rituals you could do before prayer? Try one (or more) or these ideas:

_Ï Pour yourself a cold glass of water to have handy.
_Ï Make a nice cup of hot tea and sip a little before beginning. _Ï Light a nice scented candle somewhere in the room. _Ï Reach your hands up to the ceiling and stretch.
_Ï Put on some soft music.
_Ï If you've always got the radio or television on, perhaps you might

want to turn it off for this short time.