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  Click on the Icons below to be taken to the Church of England Daily Prayers MORNING PRAYER
Book of Common Prayer
Common Worship
EVENING PRAYER
Book of Common Prayer
Common Worship
NIGHT PRAYER (Trad)
(Cont)
Prayer: a beginner’s guide
The good thing about prayer is that there’s only one way to go wrong, and that’s not to do it. The best way to do it is to just get on and do it. If prayer at its simplest level is listening to God and talking to him, you don’t need long books to tell you how to do it, you just need a conviction that prayer is a good thing to do, that you’re someone God wants to hear from and that he’s worth talking to.
Is prayer a good thing to do? Never mind for the moment about whether prayer ‘works’ or not: Jesus prayed and he encouraged his disciples to pray too, so if we’re following him, we need to be praying. Full stop.
Are you someone God wants to hear from? The message of the Bible is that however unworthy, sinful and useless we may feel as human beings, God can’t wait to hear from us and is sitting on the edge of his seat like a lovestruck teenager, hand poised ready to pick up the phone the second it rings.
Is he worth talking to? He’s the one person who knows us inside out, the one person with infinite power at his fingertips, the one who has the true perspective on an entire world’s story. Not a slot machine to pay into in the hope of one day getting ‘an answer to prayer’, but a person. Who likes us.
How might you begin to pray? What sort of a person are you? Do you like a good gossip? Then gossip to God. Are you the strong silent type? Then be silent in his presence. Say hello... say the Lord’s Prayer ... say ‘Oh God’ and mean it... deliberately be silent and still for one minute ... read a story from a Gospel and imagine what you would say to Jesus if you were there... tell him about what is worrying you or thrilling you ... copy the great pray-ers of the Bible and of the Church... write a letter to him ... listen and look for a few moments in a place you consider holy... You can’t go wrong. Prayer is good. God longs to hear from you. He’s worth it.
Lucy Moore, of the Bible Reading Fellowship - from the Parish Pump. A Prayer for Today
Heavenly Father, help us remember that the idiot who cut us up in traffic last night is a single mother who worked nine hours that day and is rushing home to cook dinner, help with homework, do the laundry and spend a few precious moments with her children.
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