Matthew Laker

Have you ever said, “I want to be better in my prayer life,” or how about, “I want to increase my prayer time, but where will I find the time?”

Developing the habit of prayer is one of the great challenges for many believers today. For many of us, we must start with a simple mind shift when it comes to our prayer life.

When many people think of prayer, they think of intercession prayer and long periods of prayer. There is nothing wrong with those, but what if prayer is both less and more than that? What if it is about the relationship?

To develop any relationship we know we need multiple interaction. Now right away some are thinking, I do not have the time. However, prayer is about our relationship with God and for many of us we need to rethink that relationship.

The reality is you do have time, you just need to change your mind set. You may not be able to spend long periods in prayer, but you can however, develop the habit of not ignoring God in the everyday.

Dean Inge says, “If we spend 16 hours daily of our waking life thinking about the affairs of the world, and five minutes in thinking about God, this world will seem 200 times more real than God.”

One of the core realities of prayer is to connect us with God and get out of the habit of ignoring God. Prayer, at its basic level, is just about recognizing God’s presence with us and in us. It is stopping for a moment to look upon him — taking a moment to thank him, confess, call for wisdom or help, ask for direction, or pray a blessing for someone else.

In my life I have been reflecting on how to do this and how to help other people who are dealing with the same problem. Then one Sunday at church the pastor brought up a man named John Burke in his sermon in regard to a practical tip. John Burke shares in his book, “Soul Revolution,” a way to stay connected to God and be responsive to him. What he introduces is a mind shift in thinking about prayer.

He called it the 60/60 challenge, but when I first heard it the pastor changed it to 60/40. The challenge works like this: Every 60 waking minutes set an alarm to beep at the top of the hour. When the alarm beeps, take a moment to talk to God, but not to tell God everything you need him to do. Instead, this is a moment to interrupt our ignoring of God. Possible elements of this minute or two may include:

– recognizing his presence

– giving thanks and confessing

– asking if there is anything you need to hear

– listening

– praying for someone else

Now you do not have to do all of these points or spend much time in them, just a minutes or two is all you are doing. The beep is to remind you that God is there — to look upon Christ.

As we develop the habit of prayer, a great first step is to interrupt our ignoring of God.