Many people find it hard to pray using their own words. For some, they can only ever use words once spoken by someone else to join their hearts to God, and while the Christian heritage has some great prayers, it's important to be able to put our own words into prayer too.
In today's class on sexuality there was an aside about a model for prayer which I think might be worth holding onto. It's "You - who - do - through"
that is
1. Addressing God in first person - You2. Saying something about God, and/or thanking God- who
3. Making a request to God - do
4. Concluding the prayer in a trinitarian way - through Jesus and with the Holy Spirit.
eg.
1. God, giver of all life
2. You are the one who has made us in your image and made our hearts yearn for you
3. Please open my heart more and more to you. Show me the barriers in my life to greater intimacy with you, and help me to remove them.
4. I ask this through Christ, our Lord, Amen.
Smick, huh? Just remember you-who-do-through, and fill in the blanks with whatever you want to say.
0 comments:
Post a Comment