Does your mind wander when you\u2019re praying? Do you close your eyes, ready to talk to God and instead of spiritual peace, you find yourself thinking about the cute cat photo you saw on Facebook, the check you need to deposit, the noisy muffler on the car outside, the milk you forgot to buy at the grocery store? Does your prayer time become an open market for a thousand and one interruptions?<\/p>\n
Sure it does. Happens to the best of us. My brain goes hither and yon during prayer. It\u2019s like a dog that jumped a fence and has a mind to wander all over the neighborhood, poking into everybody else\u2019s yard. Here are some pointers for when your mind wanders in prayer.<\/p>\n
1) <\/strong>Go where your mind goes.<\/strong> 2) <\/strong>Give the thought back to God. <\/strong> 3) <\/strong>Throw an anchor to windward.<\/strong> 4) <\/strong>Write the prayers down. <\/strong> 5) <\/strong>The intention is what counts.<\/strong> Does your mind wander when you\u2019re praying? Do you close your eyes, ready to talk to God and instead of spiritual peace, you find yourself thinking about the cute cat photo you saw on Facebook, the check you need to deposit, the noisy muffler on the car outside, the milk you forgot to buy at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":30747,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[251],"tags":[14],"ppma_author":[476],"class_list":["post-24216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-how-to-pray","tag-spiritual-growth"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
\nDon\u2019t fight it. Hear the thought. Notice it. If I fight a thought when I\u2019m trying to pray, it only gets bigger and simply more distracting. Better to acknowledge it. Some days my thoughts are noisier than others, my head a chatterbox. All the more reason I should be giving myself this quiet one-on-one time with God, because here\u2019s my chance to do something with those thoughts\u2026<\/p>\n
\nTurn it into a prayer. \u201cThanks, God, for Facebook and the cute photos our friends post. Lord, keep an eye on our finances and the checks that we deposit\u2013you know our needs. Forgive me for complaining about my neighbor\u2019s noisy car. May it get her to and from her work. \u201d Maybe the distraction is something you needed to pray about.<\/p>\n
\nHave a sacred phrase to keep pulling you back to prayer. It can just be one word\u2013Abba, Father, Lord, Jesus, Christ, Divine Master\u2013to remind you just Who you\u2019re addressing or a sentence from the Lord\u2019s prayer or the Jesus prayer, \u201cJesus Christ, have mercy upon me.\u201d Each \u201cAbba\u201d or \u201cFather\u201d pulls you back to the work of giving yourself over to God.<\/p>\n
\nKeep a prayer journal. Pray on a page. The people I know who do this regularly say that writing down prayers by hand is better than typing them. It\u2019s more tactile. My handwriting is so bad that I can\u2019t imagine God being able to read any of my scrawl, but then, doesn\u2019t God know what my thoughts are anyway? Which leads me to the last point:<\/p>\n
\nGod knows what you want to say better than you know yourself. As Paul said, \u201cWe don\u2019t know what we should pray, but the Spirit itself pleads our case\u2026\u201d (Romans 8:26). That you have given yourself a set time of prayer, that you yearn to be in God\u2019s presence, that you have needs only God can fill, that\u2019s what matters. The thoughts will come and go, the distractions wax or wane, but your desires will be heard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"