Why Still Keep Praying? 5 Secrets to Calming, Comforting Prayer (& Free Pocket Prayers)

I hear an analyst say this week that the question she is getting most these days is, “Are we going to be okay?”  Are we going to be okay next week, next month, next year, are we going to be okay no matter what happens, are we going to be okay to be neighbours and communities and all fellow members of the family of humanity and how do we pray to be okay through days like these? 

I lean in toward a mother who tells me this week that her 12-year-old son’s asking her why bother to pray when God already knows everything, rules over everything, decides everything?

I’m standing beside a young woman in a cafe on one on of the last warm nights of October when she takes this call, cups her mouth in her hand as she shakes her head in wide-eyed disbelief, over and over again. She will stammer it out to me afterward: A woman in her circle, who hasn’t been a mama more than a handful of days, just died by postpartum depression. Her baby is only handful of days old. I ask for their names so I can pray, because there are real reasons why I believe: Prayer isn’t the least we can do, and prayer isn’t all we can do, but prayer is always the most we can do. 

I sit with my father-in-law who just marked the milestone of completing his 90th year on this planet, and his wrinkled hand pats mine, tells me, “I pray for every single one of you every day,” every single one of his 7 children, and each of their children, and each of their grandchildren, his great grandchildren. This is doing the work. This is doing the work into your 9th decade on this planet, till your very last breath. 

When we pray, we’re turning to face the presence of Love who comforts us.  And the reality is: Real comfort is only found in real intimacy with the Comforter Himself.

His oldest daughter writes us all: “I have a real sense that what Dad doing now is passing the ‘praying for family’ baton unto us children.”

“I’m not sure anything matters more than this legacy,” I’m choked up. 

This is no small thing and this is why we pray in a hurting world: 

Only when we pray and invite the life of God to take root in us, can we bear the ache of this life. 

We only become love, when we pray and bear one another’s burdens with love. 

When we pray, we’re turning to face the presence of Love who comforts us. 

And the reality is: 

Real comfort is only found in real intimacy with the Comforter Himself.

Human behaviour researchers suggest that in the midst of heartbreaking situations, in the face of danger, of threat, of trauma, that we as humans have these 4 possible responses: Fight, or Flight, Freeze or Fawn. 

They say: “There are no atheists in foxholes.”  Which is to say: Find yourself taking any incoming fire, and you find yourself taking the way of prayer.

They say we can either aggressively Fight our way through, or we can take Flight from whatever is in the way.  They say we can either Freeze, like deer caught in headlights, there on the way, or we can flatteringly Fawn, in an attempt to please and pacify whatever is in the way.

And in the face of profound loss and painful lament, it can feel like there are only one of those 4 ways before us: Fight or Flight, Freeze or Fawn. 

But there is always another real and powerful response that every single human being has experienced: 

Find yourself in any foxhole and you find yourself praying. 

The need to pray is instinctive, and the response of prayer universal, and the default of prayer is the way every human was made, because, don’t we all know it: “There are no atheists in foxholes.” 

Find yourself taking any incoming fire, and you find yourself taking the way of prayer.

And when we take the way of prayer — this is partly what happens within us: 

“Praying involves the deeper parts of the brain: the medial prefrontal cortex and the posterior cingulate cortex — the mid-front and back portions,” says Dr. Spiegel, director of the Center for Integrative Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine, referring to what can actually be seen in the brains of pray-ers through magnetic image resonance (MRI). When we pray, we activate this medial prefrontal cortex and the posterior cingulate cortex, which is activating these parts of the brain involved in reflection and soothing.  

Choose to pray, to soothe the pain.

Which is to say: 

Choose to pray, to soothe the pain.

Prayer is what moves you from being wildly reactive to wisely reflective.

Which is exactly what the ancient sacred text says: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God…will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” Phil. 4:6-7

Prayer is what moves you from being wildly reactive to wisely reflective.

When we pray with thanks, God chases away fear. 

To pray is to be in the presence of God who is our peace. 

Stress and trauma may cause hyper activation of our limbic system, and the Fight or Fight, Freeze or Fawn responses, can impair our executive functioning— but it’s prayer that activates our prefrontal cortex, that rules our executive functioning, so that we regain wise footing, so that we reorient and re-center, so that we can re-fuel to take a more fruitful way. 

Prayer isn’t blithe inaction; prayer is fuelling to take the best action. 

Every human being has more response options before us than only Fight or Flight, Freeze or Fawn — we have the option to Fuel … to be more Faithful.

Prayer is the fuel that ignites the most faithful way forward.

Prayer isn’t blithe inaction; prayer is fuelling to take the best action. 

Praying involves reflection — so the way forward is more clearly reflected to you, and you more clearly reflect the loving ways of God.

 “A changed world begins with us,” writes the theologian Eugene Peterson… “and a changed us begins when we pray.”

This is what my professor in my doctorate of ministry program in soul care and faith formation at Biola knows when he challenges our class with this real work: 

Begin each morning in intimate communion with the Lord and a Morning Prayer of Intention… then every day consistently pray your way through each of the 150 Psalms, once in the words of Scripture, once in your own words…. and then close each day with a nightly prayer of examine. 

Prayer is the fuel that ignites the most faithful way forward.

The theologian, Timothy Keller, who may have been the CS Lewis of our times, he stopped and prayed 5 psalms a day, throughout the day, every day, for the last 20 years of his life. That’s praying through all 150 Psalms, every single month, 12 months of the year — year after year, for 20 years. 

This is the real work — the real work that changes us, that ushers in more of the Kingdom of God that changes the world. This is the primary work of a lifetime, this is the work worthy of your life. 

I steady into this work these days, this daily rhythm of daily prayer, often taking prayer walks through the farm’s back woods, carrying these folded prayers in my pockets, these Psalms and laments, praise and thanksgiving, petitions and pleas. 

Fold all your worries into prayers, a letter letting God know your heart — so you can read more of God’s heart. 

As I sit at my desk, or walk through the woods, or pause with our open Psalter there at our coffee maker, I daily unfold these little folded booklets of prayers, what I call my “Pocket Prayers,” humble heart prayers I carry around in my pocket, and I think of one of the most powerful stories I’ve ever heard, one that Dois Rosser writes of how: 

An Eastern European government granted a group of believers some swampland, in a region that used to be under communist rule, for the construction of a church. It took a long arduous, six months of hauling wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of dirt to fill the marshy bog and create a suitable building site, but when the believers were finally ready to begin actual construction, they had run out of sufficient funds to build. 

But local officials granted the community of believers permission to dismantle the stones of a nearby unused nuclear missile silo, a remnant of the Cold War. As the believers were dismantling the stones of the nuclear missile silo and carrying the stones to the building site of the new church —– one of the men put found a fragile slip of paper, rolled tightly and stuck between two stones. Others gathered around as he carefully unrolled the old paper and smoothed it flat. 

And the Christian man read slowly it slowly aloud, the faded ink of the decades-old words : “These stones were originally purchased to build a house of worship. But instead these stones were confiscated by the government to build a nuclear missile silo. May it please the Lord that, one day, these stones will be used to still build a house to His glory!” 

The folded prayers between every rock and a hard place can unfold into answers in the most unexpected places. 

Old prayers can unfold into answers whole lifetimes later. 

Old prayers can unfold into answers whole lifetimes later. 

And we are all these folded prayers that can be read by the generations after us. There is unspeakable power and relief in the truth that: You don’t have to see the answer to your prayers for your prayers to eventually see answers.

All our prayers are like small, folded seeds that can open and unfold into answers and an abundant harvest long after our lifetimes.

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This is what I keep doing, for this is the daily real work: Fold all your worries into prayers, a letter letting God know your heart — so you can read more of God’s heart. 

I can’t imagine life now without this practice of carrying around these Morning and Nightly Pocket Prayers, I can’t imagine now not carrying around prayers and actually being carried by prayer — actually becoming prayer. A friend and I keep connecting with each other about how we so look forward every morning to sitting down with our worn copies of Morning Pocket Prayers — and then carrying them with us all day — because they are absolutely revolutionizing the way we see life… the way we are being in our life.

When you pray, you always know you are going to be okay, because prayer moves you from being caught between a rock and a hard place and into the sure safe heart of God. 

Under fall skies, through so many tender, strange days, I keep unfolding these morning and nightly Pocket Prayers in my open hands… and my soul keeps unfolding into prayer. 

Wherever we pray with open-surrendered hands, God takes our hand and all is well because we know we’re held. 

Come Away into a place of Prayerfulness & Thankfulness

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