2 Practical Suggestions on Prayer

1. Pray the Bible. What in the world should you do if your mind wanders when you are praying? One thing is to pray through some verses of Scripture. Robert Murray M'Cheyne once said, "Turn the Bible into prayer. Thus, if you were reading the First Psalm, spread the Bible on the chair before you, and kneel and pray, 'O Lord, give me the blessedness of the man'; 'let me not stand in the counsel of the ungodly.' This is the best way of knowing the meaning of the Bible, and of learning to pray."

2. Pray your mind. Another thing to do if your mind wanders when you are praying is to pray about where your mind is wandering to (I think this counsel is in one of Paul Miller's books). If your mind is wandering to your to-do list for the day, there's probably a reason for this, and it's something you should pray about ("Lord, give me grace to trust you with what you set before me today, and help me not to be selfish about my time or self-sufficient in my heart"). I think the best bet would probably be to put these 2 things together so that our praying is at the same time biblical and honest.

A lesson in trusting God

God taught me a striking lesson earlier this afternoon. I had just come home from work, and Kristen and the boys were not home yet from running an errand (to the park). Sitting in a chair upstairs in our room, I felt overwhelmed by all the things I had on my plate at work (you know the feeling, the unpleasant snowball effect of contemplating many tasks at once while forgetting that they don't all need to be done at once and that God actually does exist). I was mentally and emotionally exhausted, and I just thought to myself, "I can't do this, I don't have it in me right now" (which is a vague way of saying that I was thoroughly spent and did not have the emotional supply I thought was necessary to fulfill my calling as a husband and father to the occupants of the minivan that had just pulled into the driveway).

I called out to God in prayer for help, but I realized something. In asking God for help, I don't think I was actually trusting in Him or leaning upon Him, but rather was trusting in and leaning on the change in emotional status I was anticipating as a result of His helping me. I did not want God, I wanted a particular emotional condition, one that would enable me to be self-sufficient for the rest of the evening. But God's design in that moment, it seems, was for me to realize that He is all-sufficient. My trust is to be ultimately in Him, not in His help. Though it is not biblically improper to strongly desire His help, or a change in emotional condition, or a change of circumstance, etc., if a stronger desire for God Himself is not behind it, then it can be idolatry, and using God as a means of exalting self. This was a good lesson learned, and I am grateful to the Lord for it.