Pray This Way. With Dr. Hal Green: Recent Episodes
Harold Green
Humanity as a whole is in desperate need to rediscover and reconnect with God. Prayer offers the only means available to do so directly and satisfactorily. Dr. Hal Green has been teaching and conducting prayer retreats for three decades across the Midwest of the United States. His book, Pray Like This to Connect with God, is set to be published later this year. Like the book, the podcasts will describe the nature of prayer, along with examining various aspects of prayer and praying. These subjects will be followed by a multitude of prayer exercises in the areas of breath prayers, praying the scriptures (Lectio Divina), praying with the saints, meditative prayer, and contemplative prayer.
The goal of the podcasts will be to guide persons from ignorance of, to encounter with, God. Sadly, so few persons are aware of the astounding wealth of prayer knowledge and experience available to us across more than two millennia. The heart of the podcasts, then, will be to assist listeners to morph from prayer as a monologue to God, to prayer as a dialogue with God.
You may on occasion have a vivid sense during prayer that God has given you what is called a “word of the Lord.” You will likely hear it as a “voiceless echo.”
The question remains, how can you be reasonably sure that such a word is from God? It will have the following elements: It is clear, distinct, and just what you need to hear. You do not forget it; nor does its impact diminish over time. It gives you peace and brings you greater wholeness; it contains mercy and grace. It strengthens and ignites your heart, drawing you closer to God. It does not contradict but is supported by scripture and tradition. You are always grateful to have heard it, if for no other reason than it attests God’s ongoing presence with and working in you.
One Bible passage worth praying and meditating on even daily is Proverbs 3:5-8: “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD, and turn away from evil. It will be a healing for your flesh and a refreshment for your body” (NRSV).
Not only are we to love the Lord our God with all our hearts. We are also to trust God with all our hearts, even if that includes trusting God in the face of inscrutable misfortune and suffering. Much of our daily lives may be shrouded in the mystery of “why.” But this much is certain: you must trust and love God with everything you have and are. And God will either protect you from, or perfect you through whatever you have to undergo.
To meditate means to ruminate about, to ponder, reflect on the possible significance of a prayer to you. First you read the meditation in its entirety. Then you follow where your heart and eyes take you. Whatever it is, from a single word to an entire stanza, what is it saying to you? This puts you into a dialogue with the passage, asking questions and listening to what the text might be saying to you, and perhaps what God might be saying to you through the text.
At some point, you will find yourself wanting to include God in the dialogue between you and the text. This then becomes a dialogical prayer, with God on one end and you on the other, with the text between the two of you.
In an emergency, when you need help, sensing that you cannot make it on your own, that you are suddenly not in control of impending events, most all of us turn immediately to God for help. That is why it is said that there are no atheists in fox holes. Having been in fox holes as a Marine, and later serving as a chaplain in the National Guard, I can attest to that truth.
As a youth, right after my baptism, I heard the pastor read a passage of Scripture, just before his sermon. These words of Jesus somehow stuck with me, and would later become a life-line for my turning back to God:
“Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:7-11).
Christianity needs to be modeled, in order to continue to exist from one generation to the next. The truth is, our faith is only a single generation from extinction. Likewise, Christian prayer needs to be modeled as well. Though few in number, over the course of two millennia we have been blessed with some great models of what it means to be Christian, and how we are to model or imitate Jesus Christ. That includes how to pray. We call them “saints.” A saint is one who has given their whole life into God’s hands to love and to serve God and humanity.
We begin with St. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226). Of all the disciples who came after Jesus, none understood, lived and made peace with others better than Francis.
Psalm 23 is the most popular of all 150 psalms. It touches most every spiritual base. And in tough times like these, it is just what we need to hear and quietly pray. And maybe memorize. It is personal, faith-building, and assuring. It is one of the 73 psalms attributed to King David, who was himself a shepherd of the sheep. To truly read and pray these words, we have to accept the fact that we are, after all, sheep. Like sheep we cannot see very far ahead of us; like sheep we can get lost and at times need help to get back where we need and want to be. And like sheep, we require protection from all manner of evil.
The scriptures are meant to be prayed as well as read. The process of praying the scriptures (Lectio Divina) is time-honored, and has been practiced continuously for more than fifteen centuries in monastic communities. It consists of four essential cyclical steps or stages, which you may go back through repeatedly during a prayer session.
The Process:
- Reading: Slowly read a brief passage. Truly listen and become fully present to the text. What does the text say? Read the text a few times, letting the words sink in.
2. Meditation: Reflect, ruminate on the text. What words especially grab you? What does the text say to you, mean to you right now?
3. Prayer: React, pray. What do you want to say to God? This stage includes your waiting for God’s sensed presence, and hopefully, response.
4. Contemplation: This begins when you sense God drawing near, however subtle. It might be a calming assurance of God’s presence, or a peace-bringing resting in God’s Spirit
Breath prayers are perhaps the easiest way to begin to develop your prayer life. They can be brief, like five or ten minutes, and can be slowly lengthened as you become more disciplined and habitual in praying.
Most significantly, the word for “breath” in the original Greek of the New Testament is “pneuma,” which is also the word for “air” as well as “spirit.” This mode of prayer focuses on your breathing, specifically on your breathing in and breathing out. Attending to your breath makes it easier to remain focused. This prayer is as simple as breathing in and out, something you do constantly.
God can get through to us what God wants to get through, at any time. You can of course seem to close off from God, or turn away in disbelief, anger or despair. Yet if God wants to get your attention, God will. That being said, it is important to understand how God communicates with us during prayer, usually in subtle and unexpected ways.
There are seven essential entryways in us through which God may stealthily make God’s presence and will known during prayer. The better you understand these, the more readily your apparent prayer monologue can be grasped as an actual prayer dialogue, as a “with” rather than “to” God. It is vital to patiently wait upon, and listen for the Lord around these entryways. And also to take on faith that God addresses you daily, in a variety of elusive ways, though most importantly in prayer.
So what exactly is prayer? Prayer is communication with God in all its forms. This includes intimate as well as seemingly distant communication, from monologues to dialogues, from written texts to mystical touch, from speech to silent communion. Prayer establishes the bridge between God and humanity. It is as vital to your personal well-being to develop a flourishing prayer life, as it is to learn how to communicate love to human loved ones.
My purpose in these prayer podcasts is to teach you how to pray to God, so that you can actually come to sense the presence of God, the subtle but significant response of God to your prayer. What I will offer you are time tested ways of praying that will at some point bring you into direct connection with God. Everything is at stake in the long overdue return to the focus on knowing God directly. Such knowledge permeated the Bible and the medieval mystics. I want you to encounter the ultimate beauty, goodness and truth: God.