Lesson on Prayer, July 29

Practical Suggestions from Hybel from previous lessons:

Commit to a specific time each day for prayer.
Write your prayers
Pray
using the acronym A C T S

Read Matthew 6:5-8
Snapshot from Hybels:
Jesus warned his followers to avoid lifting up prayers on the street corner in a show of spirituality. Instead, He called them to find a private place for prayer. Why the emphasis on privacy? What is this inner room all about? Certainly one concern was that prayer not be a show to impress others. Instead, it should be a conversation between us and God. But beyond this:

• It ensures a minimum of distractions. “In my prayer life, distractions are deadly,” Hybels records. “Voices, music, phones, kids, dogs, birds, almost anything causes me to lose my concentration.
• Once we identify a special place for prayer, that place develops a kind of sacred aura. Your inner room, whether it is the front seat of your truck or a laundry room or a study , becomes a special and holy place where you meet God.
  
  What are some distractions you face when you try to spend time in prayer?
  If you have a place where you where you get away to pray, describe this place and why it is important to you?
  
  Read Matthew 6: 5 - 13
  Snapshot from Hybels:
  Jesus tells his followers that they should not use meaningless repetition and empty phrases in their prayers. It is too easy to get caught up in using certain jargon or terminology in prayer. Certain phrases may sound appropriate, spiritual, even pious, but after a while, we can find ourselves stringing together a bunch of popular phrases and trying to pass it off as prayer. Heaping up fancy phrases cannot replace heartfelt and sincere communication with God. Jesus invites us to talk to the Father authentically, personally, reverently, earnestly.
  Note from Willimon and Hauerwas:
  Learning to pray this prayer “The Lord’s Prayer,” allowing it to become second nature to us, takes time, habit. We pray out of habit. Sometimes people say, “I feel guilty when I am praying the Lord’s Prayer, I am not really thinking about what I am praying. I just say the words out of habit.” Habit is good. Most of the really important things we do in life, we do out of habit. We eat, sleep, make love, shake hands, hug our children … out of habit. Some things in life are too important to leave up to chance or spontaneous desire.
  

Clearly, Hybels and Willimon and Hauerwas are saying different things about prayer in these passages. Can you sort them out? Is it possible for us to be true to all these different teachings on prayer? What are the thoughts that occur to you as you read these various thoughts about prayer?[Note: Wheeler believes that Hybels and W and H are saying complementary things. It is important to form habits of prayer with saying the Lord’s Prayer a powerful habit for many folks. However, in everyone’s prayer life, it is important to include authentic, reverent, earnest conversation with God.]