{"id":230,"date":"2009-07-30T14:50:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-30T14:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/thinplaces\/2009\/07\/learning-to-pray.html"},"modified":"2009-07-30T14:50:00","modified_gmt":"2009-07-30T14:50:00","slug":"learning-to-pray","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2009\/07\/learning-to-pray.html","title":{"rendered":"Learning to Pray"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have always thought of myself as “weak” when it came to prayer. I love words so much that reading the Bible and thinking about it comes pretty naturally, but praying has always left me impatient. I guess I just don’t usually believe that it actually makes a difference. It doesn’t seem productive.<\/p>\n

But I’ve also wanted that to change, and so after reading Paul Miller’s book on prayer, The Praying Life, (to order on Amazon: http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Praying-Life-Connecting-Distracting-World\/dp\/1600063004\/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1248979903&sr=1-1<\/a>) I decided to try praying more intentionally. I made up prayer cards that I flip through and write down people’s names or requests or verses or whatever. And as I’ve been doing that, people have come to mind. <\/p>\n

A few weeks ago, a friend of ours kept crossing my mind as I was praying. I never pray for him or his family, but I thought I might start. So I wrote him to find out what was going on in his life, and he responded that things are really rough right now as his wife just got very sick and he’s thinking of leaving his job. So it was as if the Holy Spirit was trying to get some friends on board to support them. A few weeks later, the same thing happened with another friend. <\/p>\n

I suppose it could be coincidence–who doesn’t have areas of their life where they need prayer? And I supposed these stories could easily come across as if I’m a super-pious person. But I’m just a weak pray-er who is trying to believe that it matters when we talk to God. It’s what Jesus talked about–faith like a mustard seed can still change things. Give God an inch, he’ll give back a mile. It’s a tremendous encouragement to me in this fledgling prayer place to see that God is actually present in our prayers and wants to communicate with us and wants us to participate in the work He’s doing to heal and restore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have always thought of myself as “weak” when it came to prayer. I love words so much that reading the Bible and thinking about it comes pretty naturally, but praying has always left me impatient. I guess I just don’t usually believe that it actually makes a difference. It doesn’t seem productive. 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Two major life experiences have shaped her writing and her faith\u00e2\u20ac\u201dcaring for her mother-in-law as she battled cancer and welcoming her daughter Penny into the world after she was diagnosed at birth with Down syndrome. Both experiences expanded and enriched her understanding of what it means to be human and to receive each and every person as a gift.\u00c2\u00a0 A graduate of Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary, she is the author of Penelope Ayers: A Memoir, and the forthcoming A Good and Perfect Gift (Bethany House). Her essays have appeared in First Things, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Christian Century, ChristianityToday.com, and Bloom, among other online venues.","sameAs":["http:\/\/amyjuliabecker.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/author\/amyjuliabecker"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}