My father hated potluck dinners. He complained that you put a dab of this and a dab on your plate, and then the Jell-O melts into the baked beans so you couldn’t taste any one thing. There is a danger with that in prayer. If it is an error to restrict prayer to one method, it is also an error to try too many methods at the same time. When I learned Centering Prayer (I’ll explain that in one of my blogs), I was instructed to try it for at least six months to see if it were an appropriate method for me. It takes time to find out if a way of praying works for you. It takes time to discover the rhythm of prayer.

It’s something like Sunday morning worship. Some parts of the service change every Sunday. Some change each season. Some change over the course of three years, some over decades. If everything changed every Sunday, we’d be fussing over what we do when and what words we use this time. All our effort would be spent trying to figure out the mechanics of worship and we would do very little actual worship. The same thing happens if we are trying lots of different ways of praying in a short period of time. For beginners I suggest trying one way to pray and keeping at it for several month. If it seems to be a problem, then try changing. If it is working well, keep at it and consider adding another method of prayer maybe at a different time.

Read Romans 12:9-21, and remember: God loves YOU unconditionally.

Wayne