19: Your Daily Prayer Cheat Sheet

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Consistency can mean starting with a small amount of time every day or consistency can mean picking a few days a week to be super intentional. Um, but all in all the key is consistency. So we're going to dive into what it all looks like to have a prayer life and Some tips that I have to help you build a consistent prayer life that helps you have a strong, solid relationship with Jesus.

The number one thing you need to remember about prayer is that prayer is your lifeline to your relationship with Jesus. I've said it before and I will say it again over and over again 'cause it's a reminder that I need constantly, and I know that it's a reminder that you need to hear constantly too. I think we can really fall into the trap of thinking that our relationship with Jesus is great because we know of him or because we go to church every Sunday.

Now, I'm not saying you don't have a relationship with Jesus at all if you do these things, but I'm saying that the depth of it Is pretty equivalent to the depth of what your prayer life is like to your commitment to actually spending time with Jesus. Cause if you're not spending time with him, it's really hard to know him. It's really hard for him to speak into your life.

The more solid of a prayer life that you can build in your life and root your life in, the more solid your faith will be and the more rooted in God and Christ centered your life will be. I promise you that. So I want to give you a few ideas on what you can do to pray in your day. What are some different routines, let's say that you can adopt and insert into your day or into your week to help you strengthen your relationship with Jesus.

And the things I'll be sharing are things that I've actually tried in different seasons of my life and have seen work and have seen bear fruit. And so that's why I'm sharing it with you. It's not because it's this lofty, unattainable thing. There are things that I've done in different seasons when I've had different capacities to give. And I just want to encourage you.

I just want to walk alongside you, um, and give you that little nudge, that little piece of encouragement that you need to really get started, or to really keep up with your prayer life. I want to start small and work my way up to what I feel like is the optimal and what is amazing. Um, so let, let's start small. Let's start on the very easy, very small commitment a day. And I would say a morning offering and a prayer before bed. I call these the prayer bookends of your day.

So morning and night, and this really helps root your life in Christ, right? Our goal is to live a Christ centered life. And so starting your day with prayer and ending your day with prayer is going to be the sweetest, the shortest and the easiest way to start incorporating prayer into your everyday. And these can really be short one to five minute times of prayer. Okay. And the formula, right? And I say formula loosely, there's no right or wrong way to pray.

But the formula that I recommend is starting with praising God. Starting your prayer with praising the Lord for who he is, for his goodness, for his fatherhood. Number two, gratitude, thanking God for the blessings that he's given you for your health, for your life that day, for your family, whatever it is that you felt grateful for throughout the day. And number three would be petitions. And this is just a space for you to bring to the Lord.

Anything that's on your heart, anything that you want to ask of him and nothing is too big or too small to ask of the Lord. He's a good father and he wants to give you the desires of your heart, whether it's big or small. It doesn't matter to him. I always try and use this analogy of, um, a father with, you know, his adorable three year old girl.

You may have had a different experience with your father, but, uh, at least for my dad, I know that he looked at me when I was little and still now as a 26 year old woman, but especially as a little girl, you could look up at your dad, right? Big eyes, Sweet little voice. And you could ask for anything, daddy, can I please have this? You know, can I please have another cookie? Can, can you please come play dolls with me?

Can we please, you know, go out to the backyard, whatever it is that you were asking when you were three years old and your father looked at you with so much love. With so much compassion, with so much mercy and just looked at you so much adornment and couldn't help but say yes and couldn't help but desire to give you what you were asking for and desire to give you the best, right? So God wants the same thing. You guys, God wants to fulfill your prayers.

Um, And sometimes your prayers aren't quite aligned with his will, and that's okay because it means what he wants to give you is actually so much better than what you were asking for. So that's just a little note on petition. Don't, don't be afraid to ask for little things or big things of your father in heaven. Another easy and short form of prayer that you can add into your day is the rosary.

Now I think it's episode 14 where I talk all about the power of the rosary and if you're not quite convinced yet on the power of the rosary, you can go to episode 14. You need to pause, go listen to that and come back because it is so dang good. And it's truly only 15 minutes a day. You guys, 15 minutes where you get to spend time in prayer, uh, in peace with the Lord, reflecting on his life, meditating on his life and drawing closer to his mother, Mary.

One tip I have for this is to habit stack the rosary. I know that even when you have the desire to pray the rosary often or daily, it can be really hard to actually commit to it. And so a tip to really build this habit is to habit stack. For example, if you go to work at an office or something like that outside of your home, if you don't work from home, you probably have a commute every single day.

Get in the habit of throwing the rosary on hallow on the hallow Christian prayer app and pray that on your way to work. Have a rosary in your car or if it's too distracting for you to have the rosary in your hand, um, you know, if that's not safe, then just. Listen to the words and repeat them out loud and just pray it out loud as you're driving.

Some might argue that this isn't the best way to pray the rosary that you should only pray the rosary when you have super focused intentional prayer time and I would say Yes, and no like yes, of course your prayers should be genuine and should be heartfelt, um and prayerful, but Start where you can if you are not used to praying the rosary at all and you want to incorporate it into your life It's okay to start this way and it's okay to do it while you're driving Even if it's not the best that

you could give in that moment I would argue that it is very good to give what you can in that moment and to spend that time of prayer with Mary, praying the rosary in just those 15 minutes on the way to work. Okay. So we went from five minutes to 15 minutes. Now let's move up to 20 to 30 minutes. Now what I recommend here, if you're looking for a prayer routine, that's 20 to 30 minutes. Start incorporating scripture.

Scripture is such a helpful tool when you're trying to extend that prayer time and really start to go deeper with the Lord, because scripture is the living word of God. Truly, it is alive. And every time we go to it, every time we read it and digest the word, something new comes up. The Lord speaks to us in a different way and speaks to us directly into our life. So what you can do is just start with the gospels. Start with one of the books of the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John.

I love Matthew. Uh, Trey really loves the book of John. I also like the book of John. Uh, I would recommend you start with one of those two and just start reading maybe a few verses a day or a chapter a day if you want and spend 20 to 30 minutes reading reading, maybe journaling about it or reflecting on it in silence and meditating, uh, a really beautiful practice to have in prayer is Lectio Divina and Lectio Divina can even be combined with imaginative prayer.

So Lectio Divina is when you really spend time reflecting on the word and meditating on it. Uh, and this means that you can be. Reading the same verse over and over again for, you know, five, 10, 15, 20 minutes, you can just keep meditating on those words, seeing what they, where they resonate in your heart and what Jesus is bringing up and how he's trying to speak into your life.

And then if you have an imaginative prayer, or if you want to kind of test the waters and see what that's like, scripture is a very helpful tool because it paints the picture for you. You know, for example, um, the hemorrhaging woman is one of my. Favorite gospel stories. And it's the story of this woman who suffered from these hemorrhages for 12 years, but she has faith that if she touches Jesus, she will be healed immediately.

She has great, great faith and she approaches him in the midst of a huge crowd as he's walking through the town. He's on his way to heal someone else's daughter and she's walking through the town and she, she pushes, you know, through the crowds of people and She works her way up to where Jesus is and the crowds are pressing upon him and it's so tight and it's so crowded that all she can manage is to reach for his cloak, which she knows.

And she has so much faith that if she even just touches one thread of his cloak, She would be healed because she knew that that was the Lord. And so you can just use this time, right? This time in prayer with scripture, for example, with this passage to close your eyes and to imagine, imagine her weariness, imagine her confidence, imagine her pressing through the crowds, imagine her reaching her handout.

And the moment that she touches his thread, the moment that she touches his cloak, there's a power that emits from his, from the cloth of his cloak. And he turns around and he says. Who has touched me. I felt power come out from me. And in that moment, she's healed. And the moment she touched his cloak, she's healed.

You can imagine her, you know, her whole body being filled with warmth and light for her soul being filled with the Holy spirit and joy and color and, you know, peace returning to her face. You can just imagine the awe that she had looking at her Lord and just being in complete gratitude and complete awe that he healed her in that moment.

And then you can imagine the encounter that Jesus must have had with her immediately after when he says, I think it's a, you know, woman, your faith has saved you, or my daughter, your faith has saved you, um, you know, be well, or something like that. He says that in, in a ton of the healing gospel. tools. But you get where, where I'm going with this. You can use your imagination to connect with Jesus. And scripture is one of the best tools to help kind of ignite that type of prayer.

If it's not something that you're used to. All right, now let's talk about 45 minutes to one hour of prayer. If you've never heard of this before, you might be like, what are you talking about? You can pray for 60 minutes. And I remember that when I first heard that I thought the same thing. I was like, That's kind of a long time. There's like literally no way I could pray for that long. I do not know what to say. If you have maybe been praying holy hours already, but have kind of dropped off.

I get it because it's hard to stay consistent with them. But also you guys in the weirdest way, once you start praying holy hours, It just gets easy. Like an hour can really go by quickly when you are in deep meditation with the Lord. And I think the key is to really get over those first 15, 20 minutes. Once you kind of hit that 30 minute marker above time is different in prayer. It's like time just starts to slip away.

Your heart begins to open and you really are able to just connect with Jesus and hear him in your soul. Maybe not audibly, but just feel his presence, hear him speaking to you into your life. Um, there's just a peace that washes over you and you could even just be content just sitting in and gazing at the Lord, whether that be a crucifix or an adoration. So. That's what I want to talk about is Eucharistic adoration. This is very common when people say that they're praying a holy hour.

A lot of the times it means that they're going to Eucharistic adoration. And this is when Jesus, um, like the bread, the communion that we receive at mass is exposed in a beautiful, uh, ornament called a monstrance. It's this gold. I don't even know if it's called an ornament or whatever it's called. This old, this, this gold piece that holds Jesus in the middle.

And it makes it so that he can be exposed to us in, in a little chapel so that we can just spend time in prayer with the presence of our Lord right in front of us and adoration can be so powerful you guys, because it's Jesus's presence right there, right in front of you, exposed right before you. And I've heard many testimonies and experienced testimonies of people who maybe weren't Catholic or had never gone to adoration before.

And in the moment they step foot into the chapel, it's an overwhelming feeling of love and peace. Um, because your soul just recognizes the Lord. Um, but don't, don't expect there to be fireworks every time you step into a chapel. Prayer doesn't really work that way. But I'm just saying that there is a powerful, powerful difference of being in a church or in a chapel, especially in adoration than it is praying at home.

Now both are good, but I encourage you to make it a habit to go to a chapel or a church or to adoration to spend time in prayer there. So how do you pray a holy hour? What do you do for a full hour? I'm going to read off my breaking down how to pray a holy hour reel that I posted that went super viral. It's got like 800 and 800, 000 views and I know that it resonated with so many people and it was so helpful.

So I'm just going to read you this formula, this kind of breakdown that's really helpful if you kind of need some guidance on what to do to fill an hour's worth of prayer time. So number one, spend 10 minutes quieting your mind and opening your heart. This is time for you to just arrive at a place of prayer and drop off all the things that you, you know, experienced in your day, all your worries, all your to do lists, anything that's just distracting you maybe from peace and prayer.

This is a space for you to just drop it off at the door, sit down and spend some quiet time with Jesus and allow, you know, the Holy Spirit to come and prepare your heart for prayer. You can simply start with come Holy Spirit, teach me to pray, quiet my mind, open my heart. That's a prayer that I start with often. Come Holy Spirit, teach me to pray, quiet my mind, open my heart, prepare me to hear what the Lord has for me today. And number two, you spend 20 minutes conversing with Jesus.

Just pretend you're talking to a friend. This can be very natural. It doesn't have to be beautiful or pretty. It can just be how you would normally express yourself, your fears, your worries, your anxieties, your joys, your celebrations, your petitions to a friend or your mom or your husband or your boyfriend or whoever it is. Um, just be yourself and just talk to Jesus. Journaling your prayer in this, in these 20 minutes can be helpful.

If you ever feel like you're at a loss for words, a lot of us know how to express ourselves in writing, because honestly, that's what we're trained to do at school, writing so many essays and reflections. So sometimes it's easier to kind of. Process through your feelings when you're writing things down. So I really recommend you have a prayer journal of some sort. Um, I have mine, the adore journal from West coast Catholic. It has a cute little gold monstrance, uh, image on the front cover.

And it just kind of puts me in the right head space every single time I go to prayer. Number three would be spend 15 minutes forming your mind and soul. This can look like picking up scripture or a spiritual book, uh, learning about a saint or a new devotion, something that's going to deepen your faith life or maybe Expanding your devotions in the faith or expanding your faith in general, uh, by learning something new about the Lord, learning something new about the faith.

The more we learn about who God is through actually forming our mind through actually educating ourselves on the teachings of the church and the teachings of our faith. It's fascinating how much our soul comes to know and love Christ more because we're forming our minds as well. Lastly, number four, spend 15 minutes reflecting and pondering. And this is where you can just kind of do whatever you feel moved to do.

You can spend 15 minutes in silence, 15 minutes, um, just gazing at Jesus, 15 minutes kind of allowing everything that stuck out to you to sink in. Um, This time of silence, especially is where you'll most often kind of like feel the Lord speak into your life, um, or give you a word of wisdom or kind of just place something on your heart. Silence is really tough for us, you guys. And I feel like it's something we don't do very often.

And at least for me, even when I'm, even when I'm home alone or something, I'll throw a podcast on or show or something to kind of like, Um, so this, this is really important because we're not very used to silence and in silence is where the Lord speaks the loudest. So these last 15 minutes while you're reflecting and pondering, just make room for silence, gaze at Jesus, allow him to speak or, or touch your heart in the midst of the quiet.

Okay. So I hope those different like models of prayer were helpful to you. Hopefully that you can, you know, just kind of grab one of those, take it with you and start implementing it into your day. Maybe you already do a few of them and you want to kind of, you know, quote unquote level up and include more prayer into your day. Uh, and you can, you know, stack them on top of each other. There's never too much time for prayer.

And honestly, if you did all those things, let's see, you'd spend five minutes, you know, doing a morning offering and a nighttime prayer that maybe five to 10 minutes, you do 15 minutes of a rosary. Now you're at 15 minutes. You do one holy hour where you could do, you know, scripture or journaling or just conversing with Jesus, meditating. It's really like an hour and a half of your day. It's really not super. Unattainable and you can absolutely work up to it. So let's say you're rocking it.

You've got your prayer life going. You're feeling super on fire. You're connecting with Jesus. How do you stay consistent? I have a few tips for you on how to make sure that you are going to prayer daily and really keeping up that daily relationship with the Lord. Number one would be to make God your first priority. I know that this kind of is weird to hear because you're like, well, of course God is number one.

But. Amen. If you really spend some time reflecting, it becomes very obvious to us very quickly what things we place above the Lord. Maybe it's social media or scrolling the second you get out of bed. Maybe it's checking your email or starting work before you even get a second to pray and thank God for your day.

Maybe it's time just, you know, unwinding and kind of vegging out and watching a show or something like that where you don't actually get to pray at night because you're just so exhausted and you get into your bed and you just are like. Whatever. I just need sleep. Whatever it is. Those are just, just a few examples of things that I've experienced that I've, that have kind of opened my eyes to how I have chosen other things above the Lord.

So putting God first in your life means making him a priority and an easy way to do this is to have prayer be the first thing you do in the day. Whether you start your day with a morning offering, or you even start your day with, you know, a 20 or 30 minute. Um, time in scripture, or you start your day with a holy hour.

Start your day in prayer because once the day gets going, you guys, things come up, your to do list gets longer, uh, different things just come up throughout your day that can push your prayer back more and more and more. And I've done it a million times where I'm like, Oh yeah, I'm just going to pray in the evening. I'm just going to pray before bed. I'm just going to pray later and I don't get to it and maybe that's just me, but I also think it's not just me.

So pray first thing in the morning. Number two is put yourself in a prayerful space. If you're able to get to a church a few times a week or every day, you know, do it. If you can't create a home altar, create like a corner of prayer, a place that encourages and inspires prayer in your very home. This can be in your bedroom or in a separate room in your house or in a corner of your living room and basically just having different.

Holy items around you that can you know, focus your energy and your mind on Jesus and on prayer. I encourage you to have a crucifix, maybe a statue of Mary, um, a Bible, maybe a holy card or two, or just a beautiful faith image.

Um, or a collection of these things, a collage on your wall or a little, you know, shelf where you have these different things that you can put on there, holy water, um, Prayer cards, images, statues, every, everything that I just said can help create that space of prayer and surrounding ourselves with a beautiful prayer space. It's going to really center ourselves, help us to create that time of quiet and peace in our hearts to really, really speak with Jesus. without any distractions.

Lastly, don't be afraid to ask for accountability. I've done this many times before where I'll shoot my friend a text and be like, Hey, my prayer life has been super off lately. Like, do you want to do a Bible study together? Or do you want to read a book together? And we can kind of Check in weekly or send each other a text or even do a zoom call or a FaceTime call, um, to kind of reflect on what stood out to us. You can do this over the phone or you can do it in person with a friend.

It's totally okay to ask for accountability in your prayer life. And chances are, if you have a friend that's also trying to grow in her faith and just really center her life around Christ, she might be really excited about the invitation. So don't be embarrassed. Don't be nervous to ask somebody to pray with you or to join you in some sort of prayer. prayer challenge because sometimes it's the best way to really kickstart your prayer routine and kind of ignite that fire.

And again, we're not meant to do this journey of faith alone, this walk of faith alone. And so having someone in it with you can be so helpful to help you build that consistency. Alrighty, friends. That's all I've got for you today. This has been such a good episode. I hope that it was helpful to you and just encouraging to you to keep going and to root your life in Christ. Know that I'm praying for you and praying that you carve out some good time to spend with Jesus this week.