From the book “The Power of Stillness”:
Rather than something to get done, prayer can begin to take on a life of its own. And, like real life, our prayer life can feel really messy sometimes. For instance Adam Miller describes a moment in prayer when we get “caught up in thinking of something else and the brain browns out.” Encouragingly, he writes that “the substance of a prayer is the willingness to remember, to heave your wandering mind back, once more, in the direction of God, and then, when it drifts off yet again, to heave it still another time.”12 One Christian leader from the Middle Ages, Francis de Sales, similarly taught: “If the heart wanders or is distracted, bring it back to the point quite gently and replace it tenderly in its Master’s presence. And even if you did nothing during the whole of your hour but bring your heart back and place it again in our Lord’s presence, though it went away every time you brought it back, your hour will be very well employed.”13
The repeated bringing back and redirection of our attention is very similar to what happens in meditation, underscoring how prayer can be similarly approached as a rich practice—which is different from our common attitudes toward prayer. A Christian author John Eldredge once joked, “Honestly, people approach prayer like sneezing—you just sort of do it, and that ought to be enough. But prayer is something you learn, and grow into, and get better at, just as you do anything else in life that matters.”14
In the same spirit, after cautioning that prayer is so much more than “polite recitations of past and upcoming activities, punctuated with some requests for blessings,” President Russell M. Nelson asked, “Are you willing to pray to know how to pray?” affirming, “The Lord will teach you . . . if we will humbly present ourselves before the Lord and ask Him to teach us.”15
Some of the nuanced skills we practice in prayer include: formulating intentions, deciphering personal revelation, unifying ourselves with God as a co-creator, learning to experience our body as temple of the spirit, resiliency in the face of doubt or confusion, personal introspection, humility, sanctification, patience, and how to bring God’s healing and enduring power into our life and into the lives of those we influence.
When we recognize prayer as a tutoring in this richly broad skill set, not just a means of getting “an answer,” discomfort coming up or surprising silence from God makes more sense. They’re all part of a much bigger practice. ~Jacob Z. Hess, Carrie L. Skarda, Kyle D. Anderson, Ty R. Mansfield, The Power of Stillness (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2019) p. 48-49
