The Prayer Practice
Pursue a deeper life of union with God.
Prayer is simply the medium through which we communicate and commune with God. The practice of prayer is learning to set aside dedicated time to intentionally be with God in order to become like him and partner with him in the world.
What to expect
Each Practice comes with four session videos, weekly exercises and readings, and additional resources to help your group create life-changing daily rhythms as you apprentice under Jesus together. The sessions are about 30 minutes long and include time for group discussion at the beginning.
Our Practices are perfect to use with small groups or to run course-style with a larger group, but they can also be modified for a churchwide Sunday teaching series, small cohorts, and many other contexts.
Preview Session 01Week by Week
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When the disciples asked Jesus, “Teach us to pray” in Luke 11, Jesus gave them a pre-made prayer, or what some call a liturgy, to pray to God. In various seasons of our lives when we’re exhausted, tired, traveling, grieving, doubting, or distracted, liturgies can carry us through and guide our prayers. As we learn the pragmatics of prayer, we’ll begin habituating and fine-tuning a daily prayer rhythm.
Practice: Create a daily prayer rhythm by deciding on a daily time and place to pray, and we pick out a pre-made prayer to talk to God.
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As disciples of Jesus, we long to pray our own words and share what’s on our minds and hearts. In prayer, we bring our pain, hopes, joys, and fears to God in a personalized way. Gratitude, lament, and petition or intercession are all dimensions of talking with God that we can spend a lifetime exploring.
Practice: Fine-tune our daily prayer times with transitional aids and learn to use our bodies in prayer. Begin and/or end your days in gratitude and start asking through petition or intercession.
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Prayer is not just when we talk but when we listen to hear his voice. As Jesus said in John 10v27, “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.” This is a Spirit-generated desire in the heart of a disciple of Jesus.
Practice: Practice Lectio Divina and a listening prayer.
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There comes a point in our spiritual journey when prayer goes beyond words to simple loving presence, or what the ancient Christians called “union” with God. This type of prayer has come to be called “contemplation,” based on 2 Corinthians 3v18. To contemplate is to look, to gaze upon the beauty of God, receiving his love pouring out toward you in Christ and by the Spirit, and then giving your love back in return.
Practice: Begin your daily prayer rhythm with silence and a breath prayer.
Recommended Resources
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The Companion Guide
Each session will use the Prayer Companion Guide. We created this guide to help you and your group build new daily rhythms into your lives.
The Guide includes weekly Reach Exercises, assigned readings and podcast episodes, and reflection questions. You can purchase a beautiful printed version, or download the digital guide for free when you sign up to run the Practice.
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Recommended Reading
For the Prayer Practice, we are reading Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools by Tyler Staton together. Each week, you’ll be assigned readings in the Prayer Companion Guide.
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Prayer Tips
Father Ronald Rolheiser has 7 Easy Tips for Personal Prayer to help you enter honestly and deeply into prayer, setting aside anxiety and distraction as you allow God’s love to shape you.
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Rule of Life Podcast
In the Prayer series of the Rule of Life podcast, John Mark Comer, Tyler Staton, Reward Sibanda, and Gemma Ryan talk about unanswered praying, waiting on God, and more.
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Guided Prayer Exercises
For this Practice’s Reach Exercises, we partnered with Strahan Coleman, a musician, writer, retreat leader, and spiritual director from Aotearoa, New Zealand, and a contributor to Practicing the Way. Links to these videos can be found in the Companion Guide available when you sign up.