Walking a Prayer Path

For the last year, I have been walking a path of prayer that continually takes me to significant scenic outlooks and past important prayer places. This is because I've endevored to walk the prayer paths of scripture and the trails blazed through the history of the church. I want to take a few moments to encourage you to consider walking one of these prayer paths as well.

For me it really all started when I participated on a weeklong contemplative prayer retreat in Mexico last summer facilitated by Charles Bello (check out http://www.innerlifeformation.com/). Charles leads the Oklahoma network of Vineyard pastors that we are a part of at All Nations Fellowship. At the retreat, we practiced a number of prayer paths of the church practiced throughout the centuries. The path that I've continued to walk on in prayer daily since that retreat is the path of the fixed hours of prayer articulated in The Divine Hours. The Divine Hours is a prayer book that utilizes lots of scripture as well as the prayers of various church traditions. The book of Psalms, in the Bible, is a book of prayers. Too often we read the Psalms without understanding it is a book of prayers that should become a wonderful expression of our heart in prayer to God. The Divine Hours uses portions of the Psalms, teachings of Jesus, and prayers of the church to create a path of prayer that can be followed daily.

The divine hours, or fixed hours of prayer, in the early church were fixed hours of prayer set at specific times throughout the day that become part of one's daily rhythm drawing our attention toward the Lord each day. We find evidence of these fixed hours of prayer in the book of Acts. On the day of Pentecost they were praying together at 9 am. Peter was praying on the roof at noon when he had a vision. Peter and John were going up to the temple for prayer at 3 pm. After being released from jail by an angel in the middle of the night, the apostles went into the temple to proclaim Jesus at dawn because there were people gathered to pray at dawn. These were all fixed hours of prayer in the Jewish lifestyle and subsequently in the early Christian lifestyle.

Phyllis Tickle has created a three volume series of daily prayers to cover the entire year called The Divine Hours. I have only been using the morning prayers (the book contains morning, midday, and vespers prayers). Even though I've just been using the morning prayers, it has transformed my prayer life. Over the years, I've found that my own prayers end up covering the same ground day after day. Incorporating the Divine Hours into my prayer time each morning has taken my prayer time in new directions. If you decide to experiment with this, I encourage you to read the prayers outloud and slowly. Stop and pause at the end of phrases and sentences and then jump off into spontaneous prayer related to that phrase. Before you invest in a prayer book, you can find these prayers posted online each day at http://www.annarborvineyard.org/. I hope that you will discover the beauty of the new (or should I say old) spiritual vistas found along this particular prayer path.