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.

Prayer Struggles

If any of you struggle with prayer (or maybe you don't but you "have a friend who does"), you might find some help in reading an article by David Powlison called "Praying Beyond the Sick List." Here is a representative excerpt:

"It's hard to learn how to pray - for the sick as well as the healthy. How often do we make intelligent, honest requests for something we need from capable, trustworthy friends? Prayer is a lot like that. But somehow when the making of a request is termed "praying" and the capable party is termed "God," things tend to get tangled. You've seen it, heard it, done it: the contorted syntax, formulaic phrasing, meaningless repetition, 'just reallys,' vague non-requests, artificially pious tone of voice, air of confusion. If you talked to your friends or parents that way they'd think you'd lost your mind. But what if your understanding of prayer changes, and if your practice of prayer then changes? What then? What if the prayer requests you make - and the ones you ask others
to make - change?"

By the way, whenever I've struggled in prayer, I've found that it is usually fruitful for me to ask myself, "Why am I finding it hard to pray right now?" That helps me identify the deeper issue and address it in light of the cross of Christ.