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PRAYER
Hey guys maybe you can help me. Lately I have been finding it hard to pray. What I mean by that is at night I get tired and dont pray and I just fall asleep sometimes and in the morning I am rushed and forget to pray or just feel like I dont have time to. How do you keep yourself disciplined to pray and not forget? Please give feedback and pray for me.
Comments
What factors are involved?
1. Do you intentionally stay up late?
2. Do you pray in bed?
3. Do you go to bed so late that you don't have time to wake up in the morning and pray?
God bless,
CS
Is it possible to make an effort to pray maybe like an hour before going to bed or something like that? We need to pray both at night and in the morning for different reasons.
The night prayer takes a lot of thought because you have to carefully examine yourself...
Did you follow the commandments?
Have I obeyed my FOC's instructions?
Is there a virtue I could work at a bit better?
Then you pray and try and present yourself to God as you really are. I personally recommend that you set aside a budget of time each night for prayer and try as hard as you can to stick to it. Praying in bed is a bad idea because you do end up falling asleep and praying when your too tired is a problem because you can't concentrate.
I find if you have a good schedule you follow each night it makes matters so much easier because once your in a groove its hard to fall out of it. I do shift work so I know what its like to stuggle with prayer and I don't always fo the right thing myself.
Praying in the morning will take an extra special effort, even if you wake up 5 minutes early for it. Prayer at the begining of a day you ask God to help you with your weaknesses and for HIm to bless and encourage you.
Basically talk to your father about it. teh devil has lots of tricks that make it hard to have a prayer routine like distracting us with study or even this site so we are too tired at the end of the night to pray. If we can avoid the devil's distraction and also seriosuly commit to a schedule things are ususally much easier.
God bless,
CS
God Bless
Many of us a lot of times we forget to pray or dont have time to pray or are too lazy to pray, sometimes we dont want to pray because we think or say to ourselves that we pray in vain ..and God isnt listening to our prayers..but these are all tricks of the devils that make us lose hope and not pray. We are God's precious children, each and everyone of us, He loves us so much, and He will always listen to the voice of His children.
Sometimes we find it hard to pray because we do not feel the effect of our prayers, when we pray we feel it is out of duty or obligation or just as a daily routine. When we pray to God we have to pray from all our hearts
Prayer makes a big difference in our lives. When you pray in the morning, you will feel that God is with you the rest of the day, you will feel His presence, you will feel that He is beside you. Pray at night before you sleep and thank God for keeping you safe and being with you all day. Without prayer you will feel that your life is missing something
-“Pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you”
1 Thessalonians 5:17,18
-“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.” Matthew 7:7, 8
-“The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.” James 5:16
-“Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints” Ephesians 6:18
-"Trust in Him at all times, o people; pour out your heart to Him, for God is our refuge” PSALM 62:8
im a lazy person during the summer cause the school year really drains me out.
any ideas on how to get over the laziness?
[quote author=CopticSoldier link=board=1;threadid=491;start=0#msg8009 date=1091029862]
The night prayer takes a lot of thought because you have to carefully examine yourself...
Did you follow the commandments?
Have I obeyed my FOC's instructions?
Is there a virtue I could work at a bit better?
God bless,
CS
i cant do that. i end up depressing myself real bad, and that did not get me in good places, at all.
That sounds like a real problem! I think I understand where your coming from though...
How about you go and see your FOC and consider if there are somethings you can do to pass the time a bit better. Maybe you can make a Church website? Do some charity work with friends? Why don't you spend some time learning coptic so you can really begin your singing career? ;)
I am very lazy too. To be honest the best thing we can do is be honest with God and with ourselves. It all starts by telling God what kind of a situation we're in and He responds by helping us.
It all starts with my favourite virture.... submission. :)
Repent in the fashion I mentioned, don't over dramatise the sin because true repentance doesn't consist of tears leading to dispair but tears with thankfulness for His forgivness.
Being honest is not saying I'm a sinner and I'm terrible to make ourselves feel like we're mud, your a good person and you have to feel good about yourself, maybe your not perfect but God still loves you. The aim is not sorrow to dispair or misery but sorrow leading to renewal and thankfulness so we can praise God and return to serve Him.
God doesn't expect us to give Him something we don't have. If we're weak we should present ourselves as weak so He can give us strength. If we are sinful as sinful, if impure as impure because God loves the sinner.
Your very valuable and Jesus died to prove it so don't feel bad because you can't control your sins (self pity) but be sad you lost your closeness with God through sin so He can come and help you.
If negative thoughts pester you at night before prayer remember to confess it! This is the best way to solve any Spiritual problem. If you know how to confess it becomes the most effective tool against sin that we have.
God bless,
CS
Hi LostEgPrincess,
That sounds like a real problem! I think I understand where your coming from though...
How about you go and see your FOC and consider if there are somethings you can do to pass the time a bit better. Maybe you can make a Church website? Do some charity work with friends? Why don't you spend some time learning coptic so you can really begin your singing career? ;)
I am very lazy too. To be honest the best thing we can do is be honest with God and with ourselves. It all starts by telling God what kind of a situation we're in and He responds by helping us.
It all starts with my favourite virture.... submission. :)
Repent in the fashion I mentioned, don't over dramatise the sin because true repentance doesn't consist of tears leading to dispair but tears with thankfulness for His forgivness.
Being honest is not saying I'm a sinner and I'm terrible to make ourselves feel like we're mud, your a good person and you have to feel good about yourself, maybe your not perfect but God still loves you. The aim is not sorrow to dispair or misery but sorrow leading to renewal and thankfulness so we can praise God and return to serve Him.
God doesn't expect us to give Him something we don't have. If we're weak we should present ourselves as weak so He can give us strength. If we are sinful as sinful, if impure as impure because God loves the sinner.
Your very valuable and Jesus died to prove it so don't feel bad because you can't control your sins (self pity) but be sad you lost your closeness with God through sin so He can come and help you.
If negative thoughts pester you at night before prayer remember to confess it! This is the best way to solve any Spiritual problem. If you know how to confess it becomes the most effective tool against sin that we have.
God bless,
CS
my church already has a website, i already know how to read coptic and most of the hymns.
im a very sensitive person, so when i do something that im not comfortable with, i come down hard on myself, sometimes to the point where i start to hurt physically, i dont do anything, its just an effect of feeling bad. i hope that made sense.
sleepy
sleepy
My church already has a website, i already know how to read coptic and most of the hymns.
im a very sensitive person, so when i do something that im not comfortable with, i come down hard on myself, sometimes to the point where i start to hurt physically, i dont do anything, its just an effect of feeling bad. i hope that made sense.
Hey there,
I'm a a little bit lost about the coming down hard part. Is it because you get frustrated with yourself and being unable to do good?
God bless,
CS
Okay there are 2 issues I can see here...
The first is that if we have a low opinion of ourselves and we may do things that are like punishments, this a trick of the devil. We sometimes think that its humility to say i'm a sinner but we have to examine ourselves and find out why...
There was a story about a man who was cleaning church on Good Friday and he was alone and he saw a tear fall from Christ's eye. When he saw it he started to scream and ran as fast as he could out of the church and he didn't stop and kept running screaming all the ay. All these people were chasing him and saying whats wrong??
Its a funny story and points out 2 ways of thinking, no one has a lower opinion of themselves than the saints, they were very humble but they also don't go crazy with fear when they see a saint. This is the difference between humility and low self opinion, which is actually a form of negative pride (as opposed to a high self opinion). Humility is a very misunderstood virtue and I often have to spend hours trying as hard as I can to describe it to people. People often misrepresent it as being lowliness of mind but thats a product of humility and not humility itself, some may say it is God-centredness. The exact teaching of the saints is that no one knows exactly what humility is but we like to identify it by the visible virtues it produces but lowliness of mind cannot be understood correctly without without understanding what God-centredness is and without that lowliness is not a virtuous thing.
God centredness is like another way of estimating how sucessful a person repentance is because its a measure of how we look at our reason for existance to be. Its actually quite a beautiful thing because our reason for existance is simply to love God. The more I know and realise this in my life I can do 2 things:
1) I say I'm a sinner because I see how much my works hurt God whom I love.
2) I don't automatically conclude my own unworthiness based on my own estimation by God's who I love.
We can understand if God is calling us to love Him we should feel good about ourselves because love is not a one way action, its a relationship of sharing and giving, can we imagine living like that with God? We have a very sweet deal. ;)
It is for that reason that we despise our sins but we also feel good about ourselves too because God gave us gifts.
I can understand what you mean by low self esteem and this is a problem common with teenagers and it is somethign that God works to rectify before we get married. When we learn in our lives just how much God loves us we can start to feel good about ourselves because we're not judged by our own standards but His who loves us. We need to learn that God is not so much concerned about us actually beating sins, this in itself can be a sin if we do it for the wrong reasons but He just wants to see us struggling and fighting because He takes that as a sign of love which is what He is seeking and is the standard He will judge us by on judgement day.
Your still young and its not surprising that you feel like that, as time goes on and you know God better and learn about His love you will fel much better about yourself but it takes time and patience so pray without ceasing that God will reveal it to you.
The second thing is the curse of self reliance, if we get frustrated it means that we're relying on ourselves and not on God. This goes back all the other stuff I keep saying over and over. We need to understand that submission is not saying we submit but actually doing it, it means laying down our will for His will and laying down our opinion for His opinion. This is a product of self-knowledge which is another product of humility.
The first virtue we must seek is obedience. This comes back to what I said before and be honest with God, its not like He can't see what your feeling but He wants you to be honest about it so He can take the pain away. I'm not sure about why you would feel so negative but go to your father and tell him your problems and ask him what he thinks you should be praying to God about and do it.
I think you'll surprised how well honesty with God works but don't let the devils traps beat you, the devil wants you to think your a terrible sinner because it stops you praying the way that God wants you to but that fact that we are sinner is good and not bad because it gives God an excuse to be kind to us. ;)
So don't feel down just be honest with youself and God will reveal Himself to you.
God bless you,
CS
Hey!
Okay there are 2 issues I can see here...
The first is that if we have a low opinion of ourselves and we may do things that are like punishments, this a trick of the devil. We sometimes think that its humility to say i'm a sinner but we have to examine ourselves and find out why...
CS
i could assure u its not humbleness.
Don't feel down. People always wonder why do we sin if God loves us?
If God was to make us Holy and without free will we would be like the altar. We would be holy, yes but He would get no pleasure from us. An alter can't pray to Him or thank Him, it can't do good works and it certainly can't love Him! God gets no pleasure out of an altar and at the end of the day will he destroy men and save the altars? No, He will destroy the altars and save us!
God is not concerned about our ability to beat sin, instead He is concerned with how much we struggle with it. That is the truest sign that we love Him.
Please keep these thoughts with you.
God bless you,
CS
look sometimes a lot of us dont pray many times..or for a while we will just be so lazy and stop praying for a while.
You are not "useless" and of course you are good for many things. You are God's little girl :) and He knows that a lot of times..or sometimes ..we kind of tend to forget about Him..because of our ignorance or spiritual laziness..but look everything is alright, cheer up; because God has loved us with an everlasting love, He gives us so many chances to return to Him