How intentional are your prayers? Do you pay attention, in other words, to the words that you pray? Especially during the words of prayers that we say over and over again. How we pray can mislead our subconscious into wrong assumptions about God. This affects our prayer life, our faith, and our personal connection to God. Here’s what you can do about it!
Video Excerpt:
Prayers in the Rosary, prayers during Mass, the prayers of the Church, for example, are filled with prayers that if we are not consciously thinking about, can subconsciously mislead us. Yes, mislead us.
For example, “Lord, hear our prayer”. That is very often a prayer that is said during the Prayers of the Intentions during Mass. “Lord hear our prayer.” It’s as if we’re saying, “Lord I need to convince you to hear my prayers, I need to wake you up and say: Pay attention, I’m praying now, we’re praying now. Lord, I’m asking you to hear our prayers.”
No, we don’t need to ask him to hear our prayers because he of course is hearing us all the time, and he cares and he’s watching, and he’s sometimes even taking action in the situations that we’re praying about before we begin to pray about it.
Sometimes, by the way, he waits for us to pray about it before he takes action because he wants us to unite ourselves with him in doing whatever needs to be done in that situation. But are we just saying the prayers, “Lord hear our prayer”, so rotely that there is no connection going out with God.
To become intentional, either think or say out loud during “Lord hear our prayer”, such as during Mass say the words something like this, whatever comes to your own heart: “Lord thank you for hearing our prayer”, because when we stop the rote, automatic prayer we become intentional, we become connected to God much more fully.
And when we say something like: “Thank you for hearing our prayers” instead of “Lord hear our prayer”, the subconscious message that we’re giving to ourselves is that God of course is listening, and because we say “thank you” we know he cares, we know he’s going to do something about it.
So look at, pay attention to all the many times that you pray rotely.
Even, for example, the Our Father prayer. Change some words a little bit in order to wake yourself up and pray intentionally, in order to give you what your subconscious needs to know as you’re praying. For example, in the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy kingdom come Thy will be done” can be said this way: “Your will be done, your kingdom come to me on earth just as fully as it is in heaven.”
If we pray the Our Father prayer intentionally during our everyday prayer life, changing the words up to apply them to our own lives, to minister to our spirits—when we do that, then when we pray it rotely in Mass, we easily bring to mind what we are really intending to say with these words.
Intentional prayer is a true connection to God.
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