SPECIAL EDITION: PRAYER HELP-SHEETS (Post159)

WEDNESDAY, MAY 31, 2023

Post 158

As we neglect meditation so are our prayers imperfect, meditation being the
soul of prayer and the intention of our spirit.
- Taylor

I don’t know about you but I had to read, read, and re-read Taylor’s above quote. To be sure, there are many mysteries within the topic of prayer. In April, I shared with you several experiences that eventually convinced me that prayer is a viable part of divine communication. We offer up praises, pleadings, thank-you’s, confessions, and questions. God responds in myriad ways, clearly, quietly, silently. Divine answers may come immediately, slowly, or opaquely. At times, we have seen the answers over a span of many years. Still the divine response seems to allude us.

Take the true-life example of a friend of mine. Nighttime, in bed, and sound asleep, she awoke suddenly to a call for prayer. No, her phone didn’t ring. She knew immediately and inwardly that she was to pray for an unknown, nameless person. This was no mistake; she took the urgent call seriously and prayed and prayed. Awhile later, the urge to pray let up and she no longer sensed the need to continue doing so. As far as I know, my friend never knew the circumstances of the situation … just that she had been asked to pray.

My friend’s response was one of faith and obedience. Yet over the years, I have heard the opposite with regard to prayer. Here are some examples. I don’t know what to pray for. I never pray for myself – that’s selfish. That’s the work of the pastor. Why pray … look what happened to XXX and there were a lot of people praying for him/her.

So let’s go back to Taylor’s quote. Perhaps, we do not meditate to or about the Divine. Possibly, we think prayers should be expressed in ecclesiastical language of which we feel incapable. Then too, we’re sure our prayers would not sound perfect to The Almighty. Herein, can we make the following assumptions (at least, as you read Post 159) in order to utilize the following Prayer Help Sheets.

Assume that God has created humankind with the propensity and capacity to pray (i.e. to communicate to the Almighty)

Assume, therefore, that God wants us to pray (to God).

Assume that our prayers do not need to be grammatically perfect or flowery-sounding.

Assume that God wants us to pray honestly and sincerely - even if the communication is one of disappointment, anger, and even doubt.

One final note before the Prayer Help Sheets: if you are unsure as to how to meditate or even what meditation is and how it may pertain to your praying, I suggest reading some true-life experiences. As I became more aware of prayer as a Divine force in my life, I soaked myself in written testimonies wherein Divine intervention and/or Divine healing had taken place. Guidepost Magazine stories, accounts of missionaries, Cory ten Boom’s prison camps experiences, and writings of Francis MacNutt, Richard Foster, Catherine Marshall, and Henry Blackaby all moved me closer and closer into meditative thought and personal prayer.

PRAYER HELP SHEETS

TOPICS FOR PRAYING THE 12 STEPS

for Persons Impacted by Problem and Compulsive Gambling

** Note: The words below can be modified to pertain to personal situations other than gambling.

Step 1: I admit I am powerless over gambling/the problem in my family ... that my life has become unmanageable.

Topics:

· difficulty showing personal weakness

· breaking through the denial of failure to control gambling

· to accept “powerlessness” over gambling

Step 2: I believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to a normal way of thinking and living.

Topics:

· for strength to believe/to keep on believing that God/a Higher Power (of my own understanding) CAN restore my life

· for strength against a fear of failure

· increasing open-mindedness about life in recovery and life without gambling

· to accept others’ recovery testimonies as good news for me

Step 3: I have made the decision to turn my will and my life over to the CARE of this Power of my own understanding.

Topics:

· for affirmation that I am, indeed, under the care of God/ my Higher Power

· for being watchful to see the signs of developing recovery in my life due to the care of God/my Higher Power

· to know that God/my Higher Power will help me to continue my recovery even when I experience a slip

· to ask God/my Higher Power to help me with personal characteristics that can be obstacles to my recovery (such as blaming, arguing, not trusting, isolating, being hypersensitive to criticism, over-analyzing, etc.)

· that I can see God/my Higher Power providing help for me through my attending Gamblers Anonymous/Gam-Anon Meetings

Step 4: I am making a searching and fearless moral and financial inventory of myself.

Topics:

· help in looking at myself honestly and in being thorough in creating my personal inventory, including both positive and negative attributes

· help in viewing an accurate personal accounting of my gambling experiences

· help not to get overwhelmed when accounting for my failures

· for affirmation of God’s forgiveness – even for my transgressions

· for encouragement in my recovery efforts even though my inventory listing may appear discouraging

Step 5: I admit to myself and to another human being the exact nature of my wrongs.

Topics:

· for guidance to select the right person for me to admit my wrongs

· for courage to actually talk with this person and to share my moral and financial inventory with him/her

· to be frankly honest about myself in order that I may be able to see who I am able to become

· to ask God/my Higher Power to help me to appropriately handle feelings of guilt and shame that may become acute as I prepare to admit (and as I share) my wrongs to another

Step 6: I am entirely ready to have these defects of character removed.

Topics:

· for help to take “one day at a time” and to not fear failure in my recovery work

· for courage to actually agree – and be ready - to have my character defects removed

· for courage to face a new life – without any addictive crutches

· for perseverance to combat procrastination and perceptions of denial

· for emotional energy during the process of removing character defects

· to continue to remember my decision made in Step 3 – and for deepening trust in the personal CARE of God/my Higher Power

· for special guidance and renewed strength to be willing to rid myself of “pet” character defects that I may be particularly unwilling to be without

Step 7: I humbly ask God (of my own understanding) to remove my shortcomings.

Topics:

· for help in understanding that being humble before God is a sign of readiness for Divine work to be accomplished within me

· for courage for changes to come into my life – and for me to look forward to and to accept these changes as they occur

· for the words of the Serenity Prayer to take on deeper meaning and encouragement to me

· for personal feelings of guilt and shame to be appropriately handled with God’s care

Step 8: I make a list of all persons I have harmed and am willing to make amends to them all.

Step 9: I make direct amends to such people wherever possible except when to do so would injure them or others.

Topics:

· for assistance from God/ my Higher Power to recall such persons and harms

· for courage to approach these persons and to trust that God/my Higher Power will help me to make appropriate amends

· to seek further understanding of what it is to forgive and then to seek forgiveness

· for help in understanding how essential self-forgiveness is to this process of making amends

· for help in expressing myself, with honesty and humbleness, in making amends

Step 10: I continue to take personal inventory and when I am wrong, I promptly admit it.

Topics:

· for maintaining the desire to abstain from gambling and to keep emotional balance under all circumstances

· for restraining myself with regard to anger, actions, and personal judgments

· for freedom from slavery to old emotional bondages that controlled my life before entering recovery

· for God/my Higher Power to reveal to me my true motives

Step 11: I seek through prayer and meditation to improve my conscious contact with God as I understand Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us - and the power to carry that out.

Topics:

· for me to see the miracles that are actually occurring in my recovery – and to see them as miracles

· for faith in the CARE of God/my Higher Power – and to acknowledge the difference that this CARE is making in my life and in the lives of others

· for improving my spiritual values;

· to understand and experience, increasingly, my “conscious contact” with God/my Higher Power

· for an open mind to answers to my prayers and meditations

· for conforming to God’s will – not my will

Step 12: I make an effort to practice these principles in all my affairs; and I try to carry this message to other compulsive gamblers/others.

Topics:

· for a giving heart, with nothing in return to be expected

· for continued motivation and mental/emotional/physical/spiritual energy to work the 12 Steps, authentically

· for patience with persons just beginning GA or Gam-Anon

· for guidance in giving advice to friends and associates in recovery

· for the right words to say when I speak to others about Gamblers Anonymous and Gam-Anon

· for patience and understanding when I serve as sponsor in GA/Gam-Anon

· for seeking an ever-expanding meaning of my personal, individual purpose in life

# 2

P-R-A-Y

Note: I want to credit Dr. Bill Jenkins for the inspiration behind this edition's topic of Prayer. From the Christ United Methodist Ministry Center website www.cdcrist.org, Dr. Jenkins wrote a reminder of just what the activity of prayer should contain. And yes, that's right: the activity of prayer. In other words, to be involved in prayer is to be actively engaged in prayer. Our mouths can recite prayers but our minds and emotions may not necessarily participate while speaking the words.

Here - according to Dr. Jenkins - is a helpful model to follow in order to deepen one's prayer life.

"P = PAUSE" As we pause before entering into prayer, we can remind ourselves that this is a holy time of conversation between the Divine and ourselves. In other words, for what is about to happen within our prayer time, we need to get ready! Again, in prayer, we are entering The Holy.

"R = RESPECT" Now we give God the credit - in great thanksgiving - for our many blessings. Our appreciation is expressed for the small and large ... for the unnoticed and obvious alike. Simply put, we thank God; and gratitude becomes a framework for our prayer.

"A = ASK" We lift petitions to our Creator, our Higher Power, our God. We ask ... for others we know and don't know; we ask without limit to size; we ask - yes - for ourselves too. It's most important for us to know and believe that God wants to hear from us ... and God's response will be God's response within Divine will.

"Y = YEILD" As we wait for God's answer, we listen. In time, as we yield and meditate, we may hear more of what to pray. Accordingly, our praying within Divine will shall call for and, hopefully, bring forth new (and perhaps, unexpected) responses from us.

# 3

FILL IN YOUR OWN BLANKS HELP SHEET

Suggestions:

P ( Put down; Praise; Patience; Possibilities )

R ( Raise questions; remember; recovery)

A ( Ability/Able; Attention; Attend to ---; Action(s); Affairs: business, financial, personal, family, etc.)

Y ( Yearn; You; Yesterday/today/tomorrow; saying Yes)

Over and over, the following thoughts have come to me; and once again, I close with them:

God created us with the capacity for prayer …

God created us FOR prayer

God wants to hear from us through prayer!

Blessings,