Amy Boucher Pye

Category: 7 Ways to Pray Blog Series

  • Praying with the Bible: From prose to poetry

    Recently when on retreat I led some times of engaging with the Bible prayerfully, including turning some of the prose into a poem. I love this rendition that I’ve been given permission to share.

    You could read through it slowly, asking God to help your love overflow. Then perhaps spend some time with a passage of your choosing, having a go yourself?

    And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that on the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless…

    Philippians 1:9–10, NRSV

    Eyes to see, 
    Ears to hear, 
    Heart to love, 
    being and becoming

    Knowing to knowledge; 
    Helpless to helped; 
    Better to best,
    Mercy and forgiveness

    Graceless to graceful
    Thankless to thankful
    God’s love abounds to all around
    God’s love, God’s love, you have been found
    –Ann Ruby

    Order 7 Ways to Pray here for more ways to encounter God, including a chapter on praying with the Bible.

  • “Five Meaningful Four-Word Prayers to Release, Refocus, and Reset” by Andrea Stunz: 7 Ways to Pray blog series

    Do you have time to pray just four words? I love how Andrea gives us this practical way to incorporate more prayer into our days as we dialogue with God. Just four words, but what a difference they can make!

    For several years now I have worked my way through A Clearing Season, by Sarah Parsons, during the Lenten season. In one particular reading, in one particularly tough season of my life, I read this:

    “Thy will be done. In relation to our ordinary, workaday lives, these may be the most revolutionary words we will ever say. Saying them can change our orientation to life: we put our little boats into a great stream and drop our oars. We lose a bit of our old control over things; we clear the space and allow God to fill it, agreeing to tend whatever growth God engenders.”

    –Sarah Parsons, A Clearing Season

    Parsons’s recommendation for a four-word prayer became precisely what my heart needed to refocus my constant and invasive triggers. With this prayer, I could release, refocus and reset; taking the mental and emotional turmoil I thought I could control and open-palming it back to God’s control.

    The four-word prayer, “Thy will be done,” burrowed deep into my daily walk with God. I carry it with me like my well-worn childhood security blanket I affectionately called my “thing.”

    Allow me to share five meaningful four-word prayers I’ve found helpful to release, refocus and reset our hearts and minds on things above.

    1: THY WILL BE DONE

    “This, then, is how you should pray:

    Our Father in heaven,
    hallowed be your name,

    your kingdom come,
    your will be done,
    on earth as it is in heaven.
    Give us today our daily bread.
    And forgive us our debts,
    as we also have forgiven our debtors.
    And lead us not into temptation,
    but deliver us from the evil one.     Matthew 6:9-13 NIV

    2: LORD, YOU ARE BIGGER

    I find immeasurable comfort in remembering how small I am in relation to God’s bigness. I often think back to the song I sang so often in my childhood, “He’s got the whole world in His hands.” If He’s got the whole world in His hands, He has me in them as well.

    3: REDUCE ME TO LOVE

    Hannah Brencher shared that she calls her small prayers “breath prayers.” I love this!

    “Breath prayers help me bridge the gap between praying sometimes and praying without ceasing. My breath prayer for when fear tries to take back the lead role is simple: Reduce me to love.”

    –Hannah Brencher

    I’ve loved this prayer since the moment I read Hannah’s words. It’s a prayer that helps me quickly get out of my own way and centers my focus on loving others well. “Reduce me to love” is a prayer that Jesus lived and calls His followers to.

    4: HELP ME; THANK YOU

    Sometimes I don’t know what to ask for, but I know I’m in need. As I ask the Holy Spirit to cover me, I always want to make sure I’m asking from a foundation of gratitude.

    With eyes wide open at the wonder of it all
    Or with broken wings when I’m spinning in free fall
    Hallelujah, deliver me
    They’re rising up inside of me
    Rolling off my tongue
    Before I thought to bid them come

    Help me, help me, thank you, thank you
    Whether you’re riding high or feeling low
    These are the two best prayers I know
    Help me and thank you

    (Help Me, Thank You, Jason Gray)

    5: CAN YOU HELP ME?

    I, myself, find it challenging at times to ask for help. William Paul Young, author of The Shack and whose powerful story is featured in The Heart of Man documentary, said these four words, “Can you help me?” for the first time in his life to another human after his lifetime of secrets were exposed. I voice this prayer to my God, the helper and healer. I know it pleases Him when I do.

    I want to mention that I do not believe our prayers to be quick fixes. Unfortunately, there is no shortcut to healing our broken places. Healing takes time, and it is not linear. However, these four-word prayers can serve the purpose of releasing control, replacing our focus on Christ’s power, and resetting our hearts.

    A four-word prayer can become a small yet meaningful practice leading to deeper conversations with our Creator, Comforter, and Healer.

    What short prayers are meaningful to you? How do you re-center when anxiety threatens to consume you? What do you turn to for a quick reset?

    Additional Resources:

    Andrea Stunz enjoys life’s adventures; best when they require a passport and are shared with her family and friends. She longs for another sunrise, a good cup of coffee or tea, and the grace of Jesus. She is a writer, editor, and sharer of stories. She desires to encourage others with the hope she has found in Colossians 1:17. AndreaStunz.com

    Order 7 Ways to Pray here for more ways to encounter God, including a chapter on using our imagination to place ourselves into a gospel story.

  • “Bored with Prayer? Use your Imagination!” by Joy Margetts: 7 Ways to Pray blog series

    What a wonderful post from Joy with some simple but profound ways to pray with your imagination. I love her idea of the prayer walk in one’s local community even from one’s own home, and think of how meaningful that could be not only for us as we pray but for our neighbours.

    Bored with prayer? None of us would actually admit to it, but I think we have all been there. We sit down to pray, we have our lists, our prompts, our determination. And yet five minutes in our mind is wandering, and we are planning what to cook for dinner. There are lots of ways of helping us to stay focussed when we pray. I regularly use prayer lists, mnemonics, and indeed the words of scripture to pray. But I have found that when my prayer life is beginning to feel stale and routine I need something else. So I use my imagination.

    That may sound a bit dodgy – can we trust where our minds take us?

    We are creative beings, made in the image of a creative God. And I believe He has gifted us with our imagination. As a Christian Fiction writer I understand that now more than ever. My stories are inspired by Holy Spirit, using the vehicle of my imagination. And Jesus Himself taught some of His most profound truths by engaging the imagination through parables and stories. So I can trust my imagination if it is surrendered to God, and the things I use it for grounded in scripture (Phil 4:8).

    So how do I use my Imagination to pep up my prayer life?

    First of all, I invite Holy Spirit to be in it. I use worship music to welcome Him into my prayer space, but a simple prayer of welcome and a moment of surrender is enough. These are just some of the ways I use my imagination to enhance my prayer life.

    Praying for myself:

    This is perhaps the easiest. I picture myself walking with Jesus, holding His hand. I don’t have a problem with this act of intimacy as I believe it is how we were designed to be – before the fall, Adam walked in the garden with God (Gen 3:8). Jesus and I walk together through a beautiful landscape of grass, trees and mountains, alongside a sparkling river and I just tell Him about my concerns. And I listen, because He often speaks back to me. Sometimes I even feel the squeeze of His hand on mine.

    Praying for my friends:

    I picture myself before the throne of grace. I know that I am welcomed there because of Jesus (Hebrews 4:16). As I stand before the Father I imagine the person I am praying for is standing beside me. I have in effect taken their hand and led them to the throne of grace. I thank God for my friend and what they mean to me, and then wait for a moment to sense what God might say about them too. Sometimes He tells me to tell them something to encourage them. Other times I just pour out my heart for them to Him. Invariably I end up in tears, sensing the love He has for them.

    Praying for my community:

    Many of us know the power of prayer walking. I can’t do that so much today, so I use my imagination instead. I walk the streets of my town in my mind and pray for the businesses to be blessed. For the people I know, stopping in my mind at their front doors. For the schools and the care homes. For the areas of deprivation and need. I find it a really helpful way to focus and often a deeply moving experience.

    Using my imagination doesn’t necessarily replace other forms of praying, but it does help to add variety and colour to my prayer life. If you are finding prayer hard, for whatever reason, why not engage your imagination and see what happens?

    Joy Margetts is a blogger and a published author. She is also a retired nurse, mother and grandmother, with a lifelong interest in history.

    Her debut novel The Healing was published by Instant Apostle in 2021. A work of historic fiction, set in medieval Wales against the backdrop of Cistercian abbey life, it is also a story of faith, hope and God’s redemptive power.

    The Pilgrim, her second full length novel, will be published by Instant Apostle next month.

    For more information on Joy and her writing, and links to purchase her books, go to her website.

    Order 7 Ways to Pray here for more ways to encounter God, including a chapter on using our imagination to place ourselves into a gospel story.

  • “The Blessing of Stillness and Silence” by Philippa Linton: 7 Ways to Pray blog series

    How can we find stillness in a busy, chaotic world? And why should we seek to be countercultural in this quest? Philippa shares from her own journey of embracing silence as a way of encountering God. I hope you can find some time to quiet yourself today and enter into God’s loving presence:

    As I drove into the car park, surrounded by dark trees on a chilly autumn evening, I felt peace wash over me. It was October, 1989, and I had booked a weekend at a picturesque retreat house in West Sussex called St Julian’s, run by an Anglican lay community. I have been on many retreats since then but that first taste of stillness and silence at St Julian’s remains a special memory.

    Years later, I am still very much a novice at practicing stillness and silence. My prayer life is often fickle and inconsistent. Yet I hold before me the promise of stillness and silence as beautiful gateways to God’s presence.

    In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.   Mark 1:35 (NRSV)

    Jesus launches his ministry in a blaze of power – proclaiming the kingdom of God, calling four fishermen to follow him, delivering a man from an evil spirit in a local synagogue, and healing Peter’s mother-in-law. By nightfall there are crowds outside the door, bringing the sick to be healed by this amazing young rabbi. With all this desperate human need surrounding him, what does Jesus do the next day?  Very early in the morning, before dawn, he gets up, leaves the house where he and his companions are staying, and heads to a solitary, deserted place, where he prays.

    Perhaps he chose somewhere quiet in the hills above the sea of Galilee. Wherever this lonely place was, it was just him alone with his Father. His first priority is to be alone with the Father and spend precious time with him, before resuming his ministry.  If the Son of God himself needed to do this, while he was here on earth, how much more do I.

    For God alone my soul waits in silence;
        from him comes my salvation.       Psalm 62:1 (NRSV)

    This verse awakens in me a deep yearning to wait for God in stillness and silence, to receive his love and his perfect peace. It’s so simple to come humbly before God in stillness and silence, to quieten my dark thoughts and troubled impulses, so that he can meet with me and I with him. Yet it can be so hard, because there’s so much within me and without me that distracts me from following God.

    I have learned that I don’t have to be in a house of prayer, or a beautiful garden, or even alone in the hills, surrounded by the beauty of creation, in order to find God’s presence. He is always there. I can enter stillness and silence even in the musty, noisy, claustrophobic chaos of the London Underground. Just by focusing my breathing and praying the name of Jesus either silently or under my breath, I can centre my being and become aware that God is here with me all the time and can pour his peace into my heart any time. It doesn’t matter where I am. It doesn’t matter what’s going on. Just as Jesus met with his Father in intimacy and solitude, so I too can enter that intimacy and solitude with the Father and the Son.

    Entering prayer through stillness and silence leads me more deeply into a loving awareness of God. It’s so simple … and God never stops inviting me to come ever closer and deeper.

    Philippa Linton is the administrator for the education and learning office of the United Reformed Church. She is also an Anglican lay minister. She wrote a devotional for the anthology ‘Light for the Writer’s Soul’, published by Media Associates International, and her short story ‘Magnificat’ appears in the ACW Christmas Anthology.

    Order 7 Ways to Pray here for more ways to encounter God, including resources for small groups.

  • “Learning to Lament” by Rachael Newham: 7 Ways to Pray blog series

    What happens when God is suddenly silent? Rachael shares movingly of her experiences as a teenager and beyond. She eventually found hope in the Psalms and learning how to lament. That someone before her could voice her feelings gave her a language with which to communicate with God. She learned to lament. I believe you’ll find her post so encouraging:

    It was a running joke when I was small girl that if I were saying grace, we’d better get the microwave on standby as the food would be cold by the time I’d finished praying. As a young child, prayer felt as natural to me as breathing, a near-constant conversation between my God and I.

    As I grew older however, the easy connection became strained, even more so when I first developed mental illness at fourteen. Prayer no longer felt like a two-way conversation, but talking into the ether. I was bombarded by questions about who I was and what I believed about the God I felt had abandoned me to myself. I can’t remember ever doubting God’s existence, but the distance grew into what felt like an unreachable chasm. I got stuck on the idea that I couldn’t pray for myself, that God couldn’t possibly care for a messed up teenager living a comfortable life when there was so much struggle and poverty going on in the world. My vision of God shrunk with my ability to pray and I began to believe that the miraculous encounters I heard about from friends attending summer festivals were totally outside of my reach.

    I’d been writing in a diary since the earliest days of my illness; and when someone wrote Psalm 40 in a card to me during a particularly dark period, I began to address my writings to God. Suddenly I was no longer venting my pain into the void, but into the presence of the Father I’d given my life to aged five.

    The words of Psalm 40 became my own prayer;

    “I waited patiently for the LORD; he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy put, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God.”

    There was something astounding to me that someone had expressed my despair before God all those years ago and yet was able to declare that God had met them in the midst of the pit. It was not the flash of light miracle I so craved, but something began to change for me. As my writing became my prayer, I started to rediscover the closeness with God that I had been missing.

    I would later learn to call the prayers I was writing lament – that as I learned to express my despair before the God of hope, He was opening up the possibility that perhaps the gospel truth of our belovedness was not lost to me, that I was not lost to Him.

    I began to almost crave the more reflective times in church life of Advent and Lent, the ancient liturgy and story of the God moving into the neighbourhood and experiencing the breadth of our humanity, the darkness of Good Friday and the silence of Holy Saturday met me where I was and I didn’t feel as if I had to fake jubilation in the same way that I felt was expected at Christmas and Easter.

    Over the past few years however, I have begun to appreciate the call of Romans to “weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice”, the recognition from Ecclesiastes that “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.“ The seasons of life; of happiness and sorrow are experienced as the family of God and our times of corporate prayer and worship should have space for the joy and the pain to be expressed together in community.

    Our God has given us the gift of prayer and community through every season of life so that through it all we may listen for the heartbeat of God whose love remains steadfast.

    Rachael Newham is the Mental Health Friendly Church Project Manager at Kintsugi Hope and the author of two books. Her most recent And Yet was chosen as a part of The Big Church Read. Rachael founded the Christian mental health charity ThinkTwice and led it for a decade. She writes and speaks widely on issues of theology and mental health. You can keep in touch with her on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

    Order 7 Ways to Pray here for more ways to encounter God, including resources for small groups.

  • “Prayer for the Tongue-Tied Pray-er” by Jeff Crosby: 7 Ways to Pray blog series

    I first met Jeff Crosby in Singapore at LittWorld, a wonderful gathering for writers, publishers, and graphic designers from around the world. As we shared a jetlagged breakfast together, I soon realized here was a thoughtful and articulate person – a quiet leader with gravitas. I love how he shares how what he once saw as a stumbling block in his life has become a pathway to God. Please take a few moments to read and ponder his words:

    I have always marveled at people for whom eloquent and impassioned prayer rolls off the tip of the tongue and out of their hearts with great ease and authenticity. Spontaneous. Joyful. Heart-felt. Genuine.

    I’ve long wanted to be among those people.

    Though I believe deeply in the importance and the efficacy of prayer, I have never been among that crowd. Instead, I am more often than not tongue-tied, like a singer on the stage who forgets the first lines of a song he’s known all his life and has to start all over again, cheeks blushing, heart chagrined.

    But as I have grown older, I’ve accepted my tongue-tied prayer life, like my introverted temperament, as something of a gift and I’ve found life-giving pathways around it that have fostered intimacy with God, and helpful self-reflection.

    In her book 7 Ways to Pray, the author Amy Boucher Pye writes instructively to people like me when she introduces the concept of the prayer of examen, originally formulated by St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556), the founder of the Jesuit order. She has carried a specific practice of examen in her family (in her case, on vacations) , in which she, her husband and teenage children daily reflect on the joys and the irritations of their days away from home. “I realized recently that these highlights and lowlights can morph into prayer that helps me understand how I’m relating to God,” she writes. “As I pay attention in my life and look back, with his help, to name the things that brought me joy or frustrated me, I can understand how I’m moving toward or away from him.”

    The practice of examen at the end of my days has been a gateway to prayer. In quiet on a walk through the natural world or sitting at my writer’s desk, I reflect on the consolations (what was life-giving) and the desolations (what was life-depleting) in the day I am drawing to a close, and out of that reflection I form a prayer of thanks for the presence of God in the midst of it all. I often carry prompting questions written by friends at the Fall Creek Abbey, Beth and David Booram, such as:

    • Where am I experiencing an emerging desire?
    • Where might I be carrying a misplaced expectation of God, others, life, or myself?
    • What in my life is giving me joy? What is giving me sorrow?

    As I consider those prompting questions, I am invited to recognize, reflect, and respond in prayer to the God who loves me unconditionally.

    The prayer of examen has been, for me, one of the life-giving avenues for a tongue-tied pray-er. And there are others.

    Throughout the global health pandemic, I have prayed the Book of Psalms daily, guided by the devotional reflections of Dane Ortlund, a pastor and writer, through the book In the Lord I Take Refuge. If the examen helps me pay attention to what is stirring in my own soul and my sense of God’s presence (or absence), praying the Psalms helps me realize that there is nothing I am facing that has not been faced by those people of faith who have gone before me. Praying the Psalms “foster[s] communion with God amid all the ups and downs of daily life in this fallen world,” Ortlund writes.

    I have found that to be true.

    The prayer of examen and daily praying the Psalms have given this tongue-tied, praying believer sacred pathways to communion with God. And I am thankful.

    Jeff Crosby is the president and CEO of ECPA, the trade association of Christian publishing in North America. He is the author of The Language of the Soul: Meeting God in the Longings of Our Hearts, to be published by Broadleaf Books in May of 2023.

    Order 7 Ways to Pray here for more ways to encounter God, including lots of resources for small groups.

  • “Praying When the Going Gets Tough” (part 2) by Georgie Tennant: 7 Ways to Pray blog series

    How can we continue to trust God when the worst has happened? Georgie takes us through some of the tough questions she faced after her sister died. I love how she didn’t shy away from bringing all of her questions to God, even when she felt bitterly disappointed in him. If you haven’t read the first installment, you might want to do so now.

    Last week, I wrote about prayer during my sister’s six-month journey with terminal cancer. In the early hours of the morning of 24th September 2017, I sat with her and my brother-in-law, each of us holding one of her hands, as she finally slipped from this life. It was the hardest thing I have ever done.

    In the early flurry of practical arrangements, I hardly had time to stop and think. I remember, though, a late-night conversation with my husband, where I poured out my fear that I would never be the same again – that I would never be able to trust God with anything, ever, because it felt so much that He hadn’t come through for us when He had been our only hope.

    This has been a long journey of prayer and counselling to get back on my feet, emotionally and spiritually. Mine was the kind of story I didn’t want to read, when I was walking the path with my sister, hoping and praying for a healing that didn’t come.

    Yet here I was. I know my story has helped others around me cling to faith when all feels dark, so I hope, by sharing some of my revelations on the path to rebuilding my faith and prayer life, it will help those reading this blog too, in similar situations.

    Three key things that I learned:

    1. Acknowledge hard emotions and crushing disappointments

    If we leave our disappointments and frustrations about unanswered prayer simmering and bubbling without facing them, they can eat away at us, causing hurt and bitterness and eventually explosions in our faith, which can cause us to walk away from God.

    God is big enough to hear our ragings and our disappointments and it is far better to take them to Him and allow Him to breathe fresh hope into our souls than try to carry on, pretending everything is fine.

    The book of Psalms is like a manual for honestly expressing our emotions. David cried out to God over and over again when he was feeling bitter, confused, angry, in despair, abandoned. In doing so, he was able to focus himself afresh on God and allow God to bring him to a place where he put himself back in God’s hands again.

    2. Try to accept that there is a bigger picture and a different perspective that we cannot even begin to imagine – both now and in eternity

    This is really, really hard. We look at our circumstances and often can’t see an inkling of sense as to why God wouldn’t change them, heal us, rescue us, deliver us. We may never find an answer this side of heaven as to why some people’s prayers are dramatically answered and others are not.

    It helped me to look at the response of Jesus himself to his own suffering, in the Garden of Gethsemane, and understand that even he prayed for deliverance from his circumstances. Even he suffered and grieved that things couldn’t be different and even he could not have his immediate prayer answered, if his mission on earth was to be fulfilled.

    Jesus’ prayer at that time helped me, as I wrestled with unanswered prayer and disappointment: “Abba, Father,” he cried out, “everything is possible for you. Please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.” (Mark 14v36). What a hard, hard thing to pray. And, for us, what a lot of soul-wrenching wrestling to get to that point. But it was reassuring to know that Jesus felt what I was feeling, that he is a suffering saviour and that he understood me and could carry me through this.

    3. Believe that our prayers not being answered as we long for doesn’t indicate the level of God’s love for us.

    If the devil can undermine our trust in the absolute truths that God is good and He loves us, he’s got us on the run. If we can hold on to them, even by our fingernails, we’re on much more solid ground. God has already proven His love for us by everything he has already done for us. Whether our prayers appear to be answered or not doesn’t change that fundamental truth.

    Here are a few things that have helped me to get back on the prayer ‘horse’ after disappointment:

    1. Praise and worship and get back into God’s presence – even if you’re crying through most of it – which I did in the very early days. God’s presence alone is healing and faith-building.

    2. Thankfulness – be grateful for the small things. It really helps to re-gain balance and re-connect with God, recognising all the good gifts you still have, despite particular prayers going unanswered.

    3. Ask the hard questions. Find as many theories and ‘answers’ as you can. Discuss, read others’ writing about it, watch video clips – anything that will help you to process your disappointment and come to terms with your loss. But accept that you can never have a water-tight theology of unanswered prayer.

    4. Keep believing in the power of prayer. Pray for your prayer life to grow and be healed. Just start praying for things again. “Lord, I believe, help me in my unbelief.”

    5. Just do it and ask for God’s help with what to pray and how. Have a go, even with all sorts of fears and doubts rising up.

    The Rend Collective Song “Weep with Me,” says, “What’s true in the light is still true in the dark; you’re good and you’re kind and you care for this heart.” I think this sums up perfectly the experience of prayer after disappointment.

    If you are struggling with disappointment from prayers unanswered, I pray today that you will know the courage to face and wrestle the difficult, painful questions, and, in doing so, find His goodness, His kindness and His peace.

    Georgie Tennant is a secondary school English teacher in a Norfolk Comprehensive. She is married, with two sons, aged 13 and 11, who keep her exceptionally busy. She writes for the ACW Christian Writer magazine occasionally, and is a contributor to the ACW-Published New Life: Reflections for Lent, and Merry Christmas, Everyone, and, more recently, has written 8 books in a phonics series, published by BookLife. She writes the ‘Thought for the Week’ for the local newspaper from time to time and also muses about life and loss on her blog. The full sermon that inspired these blog posts can be found here, starting at around the 12-minute mark.

    Order 7 Ways to Pray here for more ways to encounter God, including lots of resources for small groups.

  • “Praying When the Going Gets Tough” (part 1) by Georgie Tennant: 7 Ways to Pray blog series

    When Georgie faced desperately sad news about her sister, she didn’t give up on prayer. I’m honoured to host her deep and poignant thoughts this week and next. You won’t want to miss her hard-won wisdom.

    It is March 2017. I am away on a church ladies’ weekend, due to speak in a session the next day. My sister has recently had a baby and has been feeling unwell. Earlier that day she had been on her way to hospital to get checked over. Now it is the evening and neither she nor my parents are answering my texts requesting updates. Phone signal at the retreat centre is poor.

    At last, my phone pings. It is my Mum. My sister’s cancer is back and it has spread.

    It is impossible to convey in so few words the direction our lives took from that night, for the next six months, whilst my sister underwent immunotherapy, designed only to “prolong her life and make her comfortable,” according to her medical notes. There was so much practical, medical need – hospital appointments, relapses, emergencies, and so much helping her to hold on to the life she was trying to live, as a mother to a tiny, baby boy and a five-year old girl. In her last month, there were hospital visits and, later, hospice ones.

    How does one pray at such a time? I had prayed before for practical needs, emotional healing, guidance, direction, peace – but never for something with so desperate, so crucial, an outcome. In this week’s blog post and next, I hope to give some insight into how I prayed in the face of needing so daunting, so enormous a miracle. And then how I recovered my prayer life afterwards, when the longed-for miracle didn’t arrive.

    1. I prayed despite my fears that the prayers would go unanswered

    I had never asked God for anything so big and so crucial in my whole life. I had to rise to it, I had to feel the full fear of all the possible outcomes and let it drive me to pray like never before for the miracle that seemed so desperately out of reach. Mark 9 v 24 became my frequent cry: “Lord I believe, help me in my unbelief.”

    2. I prayed because what other options were there?

    I came to the simple conclusion that, if you don’t pray for a miracle and don’t get a miracle, you avoid disappointment. But what if… just what if?! I took the stance of believing for a miracle but having the courage to face hard questions and harsh realities at the same time.

    3. I prayed simple, desperate prayers when I couldn’t find the words

    Many days I could only squeeze out a “God please heal her. I don’t know what else to pray.” God hears every tiny breath we utter in prayer to him. John Bunyan says “the best prayers often have more groans than words,” so I knew it was okay when those were all I could utter.

    4. I prayed specifically, on waves of faith on the days that they came

    Some days, I was inspired to pray into specific aspects of the situation. Those moments gave me hope and, more importantly, gave her hope as I shared with her the things I was praying. I still believe hope was a powerful currency for her and helped her to keep going when all seemed lost.

    5. I prayed for smaller elements in the situation

    The right words, strength, peace, the right appointments – things that weren’t so big and scary and overwhelming as praying for the big miracle.

    6. I prayed using the words of others

    I declared promises from the Bible over her, using songs and psalms – ones that stirred hope and faith in me when it was wavering or ones I could cry out to God with, as prayers. I used prayers other people had written and found those able to express things I couldn’t.

    7. I was carried by the prayers of others

    It was a tangible comfort to know that so many people were praying the same thing as me all over the country. I know those prayers made a difference, just like in Exodus 17v12, “Aaron and Hur held [Moses] hands up—one on one side, one on the other—so that his hands remained steady till sunset.”

    Ultimately, there was no miracle of healing. Within six months my sister’s death happened, leaving a very small girl and an even smaller boy behind, not to mention big issues of faith and theology, trailing in her wake.

    Next week, I will be back to explain how I walked through those and came out with my faith and prayer life still intact.

    Georgie Tennant is a secondary school English teacher in a Norfolk Comprehensive. She is married, with two sons, aged 13 and 11, who keep her exceptionally busy. She writes for the ACW Christian Writer magazine occasionally, and is a contributor to the ACW-Published New Life: Reflections for Lent, and Merry Christmas, Everyone, and, more recently, has written 8 books in a phonics series, published by BookLife. She writes the ‘Thought for the Week’ for the local newspaper from time to time and also muses about life and loss on her blog. The full sermon that inspired these blog posts can be found here, starting at around the 12-minute mark.

    Order 7 Ways to Pray here, including in the US, UK, and Australia. You’ll also find lots of resources for small groups – videos and a leader’s guide – here.

  • “Stop, Stand, Stare” by Fiona Lloyd: 7 Ways to Pray blog series

    Have a read of Fiona’s gentle post about stopping and revelling in the wonder of God and creation. Her compelling invitation makes me want to step outside!

    What is this life if, full of care,
    We have no time to stand and stare.

    Poet William Henry Davies wrote these words more than a century ago, when cars were still a rarity and television had yet to be invented. Today, when – despite the proliferation of “time-saving” inventions – we seem busier than ever, these words hold even more resonance.

    Even within Christian circles, we tend to see being busy as a good thing, measuring our spiritual progress in terms of how many church meetings we attend, or whether we’re the first to sign up for the Sunday school rota. How quickly we forget Jesus’ promise: “…I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:29).

    But – surprise, surprise – I’ve found that standing and staring does far more for my spiritual well-being than volunteering myself into a state of exhaustion. In particular, meditating on creation calms my over-anxious heart by settling me into a place of prayer. Taking a walk in the countryside or sitting on a park bench (without immediately pulling out my phone) is helping me to communicate with God in a more meaningful way.

    Firstly, contemplating creation stirs up praise for the Creator. The shimmering beauty of the sea on a summer’s day, the intricate detail of a spider’s web, the joyous song of a thrush; all these inspire a feeling of awe and wonder at the God who spoke each of these into being. Engaging all my senses in appreciation of the world around me helps me join the psalmist in declaring “… how majestic is your name in all the earth”.

    However, pondering on the glories of creation does not just lead to a one-way conversation. I also find that as I slow down and drink in the colours of spring blossom or inhale the heady perfume of summer roses that I become more aware of God speaking to me. Sometimes He shows me an aspect of His character or provides a fresh image of His care for me. Looking at apparently lifeless trees in the depths of winter reminds me that the Holy Spirit is working in my life even when nothing appears to be happening, and I remember that I need to ask God for patience as well as a readiness to recognise new growth.

    Often, looking at nature will bring a particular passage of scripture to mind, providing further opportunities for prayer. Most days, when I look out of my window, I can see sheep grazing on the far side of the valley, and my thoughts instinctively turn to Psalm 23. I watch a blackbird bustling to and fro with bits of twig for a nest, and I am thankful that Psalm 91 tells me that I can find refuge under the wings of El Shaddai.

    So, I’d like to encourage you to consider spending time contemplating creation. Set some time aside to go for a walk, or just to sit outside. What can you see, hear or smell?

    • Allow yourself to respond to God in praise – tell Him what delights you about His creation.
    • Invite the Holy Spirit to speak to you through creation – does a particular verse come to mind, or an aspect of God’s character?
    • Use these promptings to direct your prayers. For example, the scent of lilac trees always reminds me to give thanks for my elder daughter and pray for her because she was born when the lilacs were in full bloom.

    Let me know how you get on!

    Fiona Lloyd is Chair of the Association of Christian Writers and is the author of The Diary of a (trying to be holy) Mum (Instant Apostle). Fiona writes regularly for Together magazine, and also works for Christians Against Poverty. Twitter: @FionaJLloyd & @FionaLloyd16

    Order 7 Ways to Pray here, including in the US, UK, and Australia. You’ll also find lots of resources for small groups – videos and a leader’s guide – here.

  • “Cupboard Love” by Clare O’Driscoll: 7 Ways to Pray blog series

    What an inviting, guilt-reducing post by Clare about how God yearns for us to come to him with our prayers, as messy as they are. I’m sure you’ll be encouraged as you read.

    “Cupboard love!” cried my mum, smiling despite herself as we told her how wonderful she was. “You’re only saying that because you want another slice of cake.”

    At first, I didn’t quite understand the idea of cupboard love – that gush of praise heavily laden with the hope of personal gain. My eyes would always be drawn to the old pantry door in the corner of our Edwardian kitchen, its shelves stashed with baking ingredients and not-so-secret supplies of cheap cooking chocolate.

    She was right. Of course we loved her, but this particular declaration was loaded with ulterior motive. And although we were joking, there really can be an expectation in life that you have to butter people up before they give you what you want.

    And so, with a similar dose of childhood misunderstanding, it sometimes felt like this was how I was taught to pray. Praise before petition! Make sure you proclaim how wonderful God is before you ask for that second slice of cake.

    While I always agreed with the concept – recognising God’s greatness before rushing in with requests – I found myself struggling with the practice. I struggled, still do struggle, to do things in the right order. While my soul spontaneously responded with thanks when good things happened and my heart regularly burst into praise at the beauty of creation, I met with inner resistance when I tried to follow ‘how to pray’ instructions. ‘Praise before petition’ sometimes felt a bit too much like cupboard love, like I had to butter God up before I stood a fighting chance of getting any attention. It became less about a genuine loving conversation and more about the formula, and I longed for deeper authenticity.

    The thing is, I’m a messy pray-er. I’m inconsistent. I forget to pray when I’ve planned to. I stumble over my words in spontaneous spoken prayer. I can’t always keep my mind on theme, finding myself planning my next meal when I thought, was absolutely sure, I was earnestly praying for some serious world issue.

    But thankfully, my haphazard praying seems to make little difference to God’s omnipotence. It makes little difference to how God hears and responds. I am really not great at this, and yet, God hears me. God knows me – the messy inconsistent me – and wants that me, coming as I am. In real prayer, like in real relationship, we have to be who we are before God. When we are, we can find ourselves full to overflowing with breath-catching peace.

    And when I stopped feeling guilty about how messy and inconsistent I was, I realised something else. Something crucial. The structure was not there to catch me out or send me on a guilt trip. It was there to free me and open the path to God. It was there to make my prayer life more authentic, not less.

    God asks nothing of us but ourselves, our true selves, our honest presence. We can come to our Creator at any time, and pray in any order. But what I am learning, gradually and perhaps a little reluctantly, is that when we do take the time to thank and praise him, even if it’s not our immediate gut reaction, it opens something up, releases something deep within us.

    In Amy’s book, her simple explanation of the Ignatian Examen, which begins with thankfulness, sparked in me a fresh reminder to be grateful. Rather than a duty to tick off, praise and gratitude clear a way within us. When I do it, not from dull routine but out of genuine love, those moments of thankfulness lead me into a wide open space where there is room to be free and talk openly and honestly with my God.

    As messily and inconsistently as I like!

    Clare O’Driscoll is a language tutor and freelance writer who lives in West Sussex with her family. She loves the sea and whizzes down there at every opportunity, currently feeding this love by embarking on a new writing and art project based on beach cafés.

    She blogs at www.thewaywardfish.com and Instagram and is also on the team of volunteer editors at magnet magazine.

    Order 7 Ways to Pray here, including in the US, UK, and Australia. You’ll also find lots of resources for small groups – videos and a leader’s guide – here.