Specifically, he suggests framing the 3 prayers as follows (like the monks, try to picture Jesus' face while you pray):
3.
Evening. Recounting the day's bounty and goodness. For 99.99% of us no matter how bad our day was--we can find plenty to be grateful for. This practice of again shifting the focus off ourselves and expressing gratitude is a powerful way to "cleanse" your day and soul. There's a song sung during Passover called "dayenu" which means "it would have been enough"--Staton mentions a Christian pastor's translation of it as:
Thank You God for Overdoing It! Habit: Incorporate
dayenu into grace at dinner time to reflect on your day as a family. Incidentally, when I googled
dayenu to learn more about it I came across a VERY entertaining
dayenu video by the Maccabeats:
Dayenu for multiple generations
Additionally, Staton delves deeply into prayer in general but also in the specific--as in why doesn't God answer our prayers, or Why do we have to pray if God knows our thoughts. Broadly, his observation is that prayer comes down to relationship. God wants a relationship with us and prayer is the primary medium through which that occur. And in asking God we bring our focus to the relationship and expose our own vulnerability. An aspect I enjoyed most in this book (and in Staton's Sunday teaching) is the way he examines the text of the bible in its original language to expose where our own blind spots are. Matthew 7:7 is a great example of this--this is the often quote passage of asking and receiving, seeking and finding etc. The author notes that the best translation from the Greek is actually this: "Keep on asking and you will receive, keep on seeking and you will find, keep on knocking and the door will be opened for you."
Finally, he extols Mary's example to the news she received from the angel: Yes, have your way Lord"--that's a powerful prayer. And it's a prayer that Jesus repeated as the hour approached: "your will be done." I especially loved author David Brooks observation from his book Second Mountain that he shares as Staton notes: "Commitments, not feelings, are how we show our love." David Brooks further observes that a commitment is "falling in love with something and then building a structure of behavior around it for those moments when our love falters." That building a practice of prayer in a nutshell and it's why
"Prayer is a journey that starts in need and ends in relationship."
Kruse's Keys:
4 The 'whys' of prayer when it doesn't go our way outlined here
6 This book is about establishing practices
14 Prayer isn't about resolving our anxiety. Don't be anxious but pray about everything isn't necessary a causal linkage.
14-16 4 reasons we don't pray:
1. Fear of being naive. "Prayer always means submission". this vulnerability is somethign we have to embrace.
2. Fear of silence
3. Fear of selfish motives
4. Fear of doing it wrong
35 "Prayer is the act of seeing reality from God's point of view." Phillip Yancey
37 Spiritual health means not being hurried
38 The modern spiritual disease today is "efficiency" Merton
40 "Be still" comes from latin 'vacate'--prayer is a vacation from the control we think we have over
our own lives.
44 "Stillness is the quiet space where God migrates from the periphery back to the center, and prayers pour forth from the life that has God at its center."
50 In our stillness we demonstrate consent. Consent to the work of the Holy Spirit.
51 Practicing silence is a sacrificial gift to God--not something that we are meant to 'get' something out of.
56 Foundation of prayer (according to Jesus is this): REMEMBER
Remember who God is
Remember who you are
Remember who we are to each other
57 #1 obstacle to prayer is our inability to receive the love of God
58 Catholics frame the Lord's prayer by the moniker "Our Father" which is apt since it frames for us who exactly we are talking to
59 use of the term saints for Christians makes sense because it doesn't meant they are good but they have received the goodness of God. You can't become a saint yourself--someone else (that is
God) makes you one.
60 As we pray "Our Father" this is really about us asking him to remind us of his love for us. the love of a father.
76 Sin = I try to meet my most primal need without God
79 God sympathizes with our sin struggles--that means he co-suffers with us.
123 Why do we have to ask God for something if he already knows what will happen? Namely
because prayer is about relationship and vulnerability.
126 God is a relational being to know, not a formula to master--thus we get verses that say God
doesn't change juxtaposed with ones that talk about his heart changing.
127 Sometimes God uses prolonged waiting in prayer to form something in our inner being.
134 Prayer in the middle voice means we are joining God--we are active participants in a story began by someone else (God)
138 "Yes, have your way Lord" is a powerful prayer. It's the prayer of Jesus' Mom Mary and it's the prayer of Jesus in the Lord's prayer.
140 Intimacy with God yields fruitfulness (not the other way around)--this comes through:
- Prayer as a reflex throughout the day
- Prayer as a practice in the form of disciplined contemplation
- Fiery please of intercession
140 tsedaqah--Hebrew for personal righteousness -- it's the same word for outward justice
140 "private spiritual practice without equal devotion to costly public compassion [is] not only dysfunctional but oxymoronic"
142 "prayer is the furnace that fuels mission."
142 "I am your servant, may your word to me be fulfilled"
144 The above is a prayer of consent--join God and asking Him to complete that work in you
146 Moody prayed for the lost by beging God to reveal himself to those people in a way that they
could perceive and receive eternal love.
158 Prayer that births new life is slow--requires dedication
170 "Prayer is a journey that starts in need and ends in relationship."
175 Most literal translation of Matthew 7:7 is "Keep on asking and you will receive, keep on seeking
and you will find, keep on knocking and the door will be o you can dealt to Satan as C.S. Lewis notes in the Screwtape Letters
196 didache early church routines
199 "Commitments, not feelings are how we show our love." David Brooks: a commitment is "falling in love with something and then building a structure of behavior around it for those moments when our love falters." Second Mountain 214 The 33 years of David's reign as king are the only time before Jesus rose again that everyone
could access God's presence there in the city center where he placed the ark of the covenant before the temple was built.
228 yada is Hebrew for knowledge. It's also used to denote sex. Knowledge is something intimate,
learned in relationship not a book
230 Monks pictures the face of Jesus as they pray. This serves to anchor their prayers
233-4 4 categories through which you can practice confession:
1. Blatant (lust, rage)
2. Deliberate (church sins not societal ones)
3. Unconscious (deeper thought patterns that lead to sin)
4. Inner Orientations (most hidden, where and in whom am I placing my trust).
