What is Prayer?
“It starts with a new spirit of prayer, using all the traditions, ancient and modern.
“When it comes, it will be linked to what has gone before, but it will look different – because it is a new renewal for new times.”
Just start.
The hardest thing about prayer is beginning
So just start.
Wanting to pray is the beginning of a relationship with God that can grow and grow.
Find the way of praying that is right for you.
Explore different ways of praying.
Listen as well as speak.
Give thanks as well as ask for help.
Don’t just look for results. Don’t give up when it gets hard. Trying to pray is praying.
Remember, God is present even in the darkness.
Praying can be woven into everyday life. Prayer is not just something done in church. It is about praying with others, praying alone, at any time and any place. It is living life in a relationship with God.
When we pray, there are millions of Christian people all around the world also praying; daily in churches, in their own homes, in their cars, at work. You might not hear them. You might feel very alone in your prayer; but you are not alone.
There is no such thing as private prayer because when we pray we are caught up in something much bigger than ourselves. There is no “my” prayer. It is, as the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer states, “our”.
The conversation starts here.
Just Start.
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Psalm 22
Thank you to our Film Stars
Emma is 24 years old and for the first time in her life, feels she has something to live for. With a new partner, the lovely Danny, they share a flat together and are making plans. Drugs, alcohol, and self-harming have all played their part in her young life so far. She had a chaotic family upbringing and developed her own drug habit and started to self-harm in response to an unhappy and often violent previous relationship. But her darkest time was last year when she lost a baby and she still suffers pangs of hopelessness now where she questions her faith and God, but without her faith, and the family she has found at the Saturday Gathering, she firmly believes she wouldn’t be here.
“I wouldn’t have done any of this if it wasn’t for God. I wouldn’t have got close to my family again, I wouldn’t have found the perfect partner, I wouldn’t have got the perfect home, I wouldn’t even be me. I’d be a completely different person. Without God, I’d still be drinking alcohol, I’d probably still be on drugs, I don’t even know if I’d be here, because I was a self harmer.”
Rob has lived on the streets or on his wits since a young boy. In and out of reform homes, his parents couldn’t cope with his behaviour and he was kicked out of home at 15. When his older brother took his own life a few years later, Rob went completely out of control. He has lived in woods, on streets, under car parks, behind shopping centres -and drugs have been the mainstay of his survival. He found himself on the streets of Halifax after a failed relationship and intrigued by an open church on a Saturday, he walked into the Ebenezer Methodist church – and the rest as they say, is history. He came to faith at the Saturday Gathering and has slowly been lebuilding his life. And after years of being estranged from his family, he celebrated his 46th birthday in January with his mother at the Saturday Gathering Place.
“I’ve always believed in resurrection, but my mind was clouded through drugs and when I started being clear headed, I thought wow, he’s done it to me. I haven’t died but I feel like I’ve been resurrected away from a life of crime and trouble to peace and love, understanding, calmness.”
Brenda was the local white witch, heavily into the Wicca movement and its alignment with nature, conservation and the environment. But when her mother cheated death over two years ago, it was a wake up call to all the family that there was something bigger out there. Her mother died last year in difficult circumstances and all the family began to volunteer at the Night Shelter run by Christians Together in Calderdale as a way of coming to terms with the enormity of her death. It was while volunteering one Saturday night, that Brenda – a mother of four herself – dropped into the worship and found herself overwhelmed by the love and acceptance. Brenda is now training to be a leader herself and wants to be ordained into the Church of England.
“I can’t actually remember what I was like before I found my faith. I just can’t imagine going back to life with out God in it. It’s quite a scary thought.”
Howard struggles with his faith. The 40 year old from Bradford came to faith eight years ago. A former addict who was in and out of prison, he was offered a place in a Christian rehab centre for young men and it was here, as he struggled with the sleeplessness and restlessness as he was withdrawing from heroin and methadone, that he began to join in the early morning prayers. It was to be his solace. But for Howard, temptation is never far away and on the day of his baptism, he used drugs again – after eight months clean. His story of faith is a constant tug of war with real bouts of doubt that can stop him praying, stop him praising and thanking God. He has been out of prison now for over 12 months and offers support to others at the Saturday Gathering and wants to be a good role model for his teenage son.
“When I start doubting, it quickly isolates me, …Faith for me is like a tug of war– it’s one minute walking in faith and the next minute there’s a black cloud over you.”
“Where would I be without faith? I’d be dead a long time ago. Yeah, I’d be dead.”
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Prayers
Here are some simple prayers to help get you started. Read the words, think about what you are saying & adapt them to suit your circumstances.
Some first prayers to have to hand
The Lord’s Prayer (traditional)
Our Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name;
Thy kingdom come;
Thy will be done;
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread
And forgive us our trespasses
As we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation;
But deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory,
Forever and ever. Amen.
The Lord’s Prayer (modern – currently used in the Church of England)
Our Father in heaven,
Hallowed be your name,
Your kingdom come
Your will be done
On earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive our sins
As we forgive those who sin against us.
Lead us not into temptation
But deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours
Now and forever. Amen.
The Hail Mary
Hail Mary, full of grace
The Lord is with you.
Blessed are you among women
And blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, mother of God,
Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
Prayer of St Francis of Assisi
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
Where there is hatred, let me sow peace,
Where there is injury, let me sow pardon,
Where there is doubt, let me sow faith,
Where there is despair, let me give hope,
Where there is darkness, let me give light,
Where there is sadness, let me give joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may
Not try to be comforted, but comfort,
Not try to be understood but to understand,
Not try to be loved but to love.
Because it is in the giving that we receive
It is in the forgiving that we are forgiven
And it is in the dying that we are born to eternal life.
Prayer of preparation
Almighty God
To whom all hearts are open,
All desires known,
And from whom no secrets are hidden:
Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts
By the inspiration of your Holy Spirit,
That we may perfectly love you,
And worthily magnify your holy name;
Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Grace – this can be used at the end of prayer.
The Grace of our Lord, Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with us all now and for evermore. Amen.
The Jesus Prayer:
‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
Prayer ideas to fit in with your daily life
Morning
O Lord, enable us this day to reveal your glory in all we think and say and do; that your presence may bless and strengthen us all the day long, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
Lord, the smile of the dawn lights up the sky.
May the smile of your face, light up our day. Amen.
Almighty and everlasting God,
We thank you that you have brought us safely to the beginning of this day.
Keep us from falling into sin or running into danger,
Order us in all our doings
And guide us to do always what is righteous in your sight;
Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Jesus, be close to me and those I love through the twists and turns of today and be with me at the day’s end. Amen.
Travelling/On a journey
May our Lord Jesus Christ go before us to guide us;
Stand behind us to give us strength;
And watch over us to protect us as we travel. Amen.
In the name of God I go on this journey. May God the Father be with me, God the Son protect me, and God the Holy Ghost be by my side. Amen.
Lord, be our guide and our protector
on the journey we are about to take.
Watch over us.
Protect us from accidents.
Keep us free from harm to body and soul.
Lord, support us with your grace when we are tired.
Help us be patient in any trouble which may come our way.
Keep us always mindful of your presence and love. Amen.
Dear Saint Christopher,
protect me today
in all my travels
along the road’s way.
Give your warning sign
if danger is near
so that I may stop
while the path is clear.
Be at my window
and direct me through
when the vision blurs
From out of the blue.
Carry me safely
to my destined place,
like you carried Christ
in your close embrace.
Amen.
Mealtimes
For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful. Amen.
O Lord, bless this food to our use and ourselves to your service and keep us ever mindful of the needs of others. Amen.
In a world where so many are hungry, we give thank you for food. In a world were so many are lonely, we thank you for each other. Amen.
At the end of the day
Save us, O Lord, while waking and guard us while sleeping, that awake we may watch with Christ and when we sleep, we may rest in peace. Amen.
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep,
Watch and guard me through the night,
and wake me with the morning light.
Amen.
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Explore Prayer
Here you will find various aids to help you start praying or to lead you into a deeper, more regular prayer life. Whether it be apps, podcasts, videos or just praying the important thing is to start.
The Lord’s Prayer
The Lord’s Prayer shows us what prayer is all about, it sums up faith, it gives us a definition for prayer which is about a relationship with God and gives us a pattern for our praying.
Our Father… we come into a relationship with God, we need God.
Hallowed be your name… we give God our thanks and praise
Your kingdom come, your will be done… we seek God’s will
Give us today our daily bread… we ask for all that we need
Forgive us our sins… we ask to be forgiven and be forgiving
Lead us not into temptation… we ask for strength to resist
Amen… so be it
Listen as well as speak. Give thanks as well as ask for help
Prayer fast forwards us to God. It puts God at the centre of our lives. It allows us to unwind, to listen, to be heard. It allows us to start a conversation. We can be forgiven for the things that have gone wrong. We can always start again with God.
Don’t look for results. Don’t give up when it gets hard.
Everyone finds it hard to make sense of the terrible suffering in the world and still believe in a loving God who hears our prayers. But the Christian faith shows us a God, who,in Jesus shares our life and on the cross suffers with us. God is love sharing our life; God is eternal life, showing us a life beyond this one.
Trying to pray is praying.
Make it a regular daily practice. Use your times of prayer to make your life prayerful. Put God at the centre of your life. Keep it simple and focused. Just start and take this crucial first step in seeing faith as part of your day to day lived reality, something as natural as breathing, as refreshing as water from the spring, as transformative as love.
And remember, God is present even in the darkness.
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The Lord’s Prayer ad
Farmer, James, manages six hundred acres of farmland in Hampshire that was, in all likelihood, bequeathed to the Church around AD 650 by a Saxon King who converted to Christianity. He is the fourth generation of his family working the farm. He is a committed Christian and prays as often as his cattle and sheep allow.
We found our two refugees at Borderlands Bristol, a registered charity working especially with people seeking asylum in the UK or those who have become refugees from other countries. The centre offers hot meals, wellbeing and practical support for people of all faiths and none and strives to be a place of peace and calm for people who have often experience traumatic life experiences.
Tough Talk is a registered charity dedicated to sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ to those who would not normally go to church. It is made up of a group of ex-bouncers, ex-football hooligans and ex-East End hard men who have turned their backs on their past. Many of the team are keen powerlifters. Founder Ian, who features in our film, began working as a nightclub bouncer at the age of 18. He travels with the team sharing his faith in Jesus Christ and the love of God.
St Mary’s Church Primary School in Kilburn is a popular school situated in the heart of London, with all the opportunities and challenges that face people living and working in one of the major capitals of the world. It is one of 4,700 church schools which educate around one million young people. They are a vital part of the ministry of the church and provide inclusive education with a Christian ethos.
The baptism is part of the Saturday Gathering story. This Fresh Expressions of church grew out of the Halifax Food and Support Drop-In run by Christians Together in Calderdale which has been providing food and toiletries parcels and prayer to the most vulnerable for six years. It has just celebrated its third birthday and in that time has baptised over 80 new disciples.
Our festival goer is theology student Pollyanna. She is in her third year studying at university where she loves to explore the role of Christianity in today’s world. Her own faith leads her to attempt to live her life showing as much love, compassion and grace to others, as she can.
Commuter, Jonny, is married to Amy and has four children under 5. He is currently training to be a Priest at St. Mellitus, an Anglican training college in central London, where he enjoys thinking and talking about (and to) God. He also has a deep love for Manchester City Football Club.
Kameo and Enrico tied the knot in the beautiful St Stephen’s Church, Lindley, Huddersfield in October and invited us to their special day. It was just one of 1,000 weddings conducted in the Church of England every week. Marriage vows, in the form “To have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part”, have been recited at UK church weddings since 1552.
Sgt Brian is a branch leader of the Christian Police Association for the Cleveland Police where he serves. The CPA has been serving those in the police service for over 130 years and continue to seek to be active and relevant in that role. Its members believe that by maintaining a strong relationship with God they can overcome temptation and having fellowship with other doing the same job is a means to that end.
Leeds Street Angels help to make the city centre a safer place to be on a night out. They are part of the wider Christian Nightlife Initiative – amazing teams of volunteers who combine prayer with action in night-time communities – prayer that comes in the shape of flip-flops, lollipops, bottles of water and teams of people with a mission to love the person in front of them.
Out of Many One Voice is the mission statement of the London Gospel Community Choir. Led by the Revd Bazil, they are committed to encourage unity, love and respect among all people through the arts and their faith in God with a packed programme of events which this year saw their members on the X Factor and in Trafalgar Square for Royal British Legion Silence in the Square event.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby is the senior bishop and principal leader of the Church of England, the symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican Communion and the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Canterbury. He was enthroned at Canterbury Cathedral in March 2013.His threepriority areas for his ministry include prayer and the religious life, reconciliation and evangelism and witness.
The Community of St Anselm is made up of 36 young men and women from across the UK and around the world. They have become the first members of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s new monastic-inspired community at Lambeth Palace – a programme for Christians aged 20-35 to spend a year praying, studying ethics and theology, and serving the poorest in local communities.
Our mourner, Sam lost his father earlier this year. Martin Cavender was a leading Church of England evangelist. Sam works for the church in Bristol and is a self confessed graphics geek.
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Everything you need to do before and after Psychic reading
The beauty in a psychic reading is that it should feel like once in a lifetime precious experience. You can do it as many times as you want, but everyone should be special. But that is hard to accomplish because it depends not just on your psychic medium reader, or on your state of mind, but rather on in which part of life are you now, and how fate is turning out for you.
That is why it is best for your experience to prepare yourself for this encounter and get as much as you can from it, in order to collect all the energy and information you will need for this and upcoming periods in your life.
Are you doing it for all the right reasons?
The thing is, that you need to have a goal, a sense of purpose you want to accomplish from a reading. You shouldn’t do it just for fun of it but your mind and body needs to be aligned with the questions, needs, and longing you seek in a psychic reading. Prepare for an experience that is coming but first find in your self your deepest desires you want to be answered to. You should be open to learning how to prepare for a psychic medium reading.
Come back to yourself after the reading
Trust your instincts and take your time to process everything that happened. Maybe answers aren’t clear right away but they will be after a while. Feel yourself and your mind without any boundaries and trust your inner voice because it will lead you desires of your heart. Everything that was said process in your own way and you may find more meaning than your medium did. After all the reading was intended for your ears only.
Take your time
Take your time to make yourself and your life open, allow fate to happen, and make a pause between readings. Allow life to present to you some of the new parts of yourself and the world before you rush back to find out more.
Every force in life, every energy, every fate needs time. Every person needs time too. You should lead open life, where people, places, and experiences can come, but also can move on from. Life is not a shelf where you collect every little thing, it is a space that surrounds you with heavenly ever changing wonders, lesions, gifts, and infinite colors.
Cleanse your life from any negative energy that is keeping you down
Today it is very popular to use the term energy to describe psychic phenomena, however, a few who accurately talk about what exactly this energy is. Since these are psychic phenomena, energy in this sense represents the field of our thoughts and emotions. There is a whole range of different frequencies of energy, from the physical, which is measured by the joules, to the divine light itself, but what we mean by energy is psychic energy, created by emotions and thoughts.
That’s what we need to keep in mind when we think about how to protect ourselves from negative energy, because, the essence of our defense is understanding what exactly we need to defend.
How to detect negativity around us?
It has happened to all of us that in the presence of an extremely negative person we feel a change in mood, nervousness or something similar, even though we did not communicate directly with that person. It is the transmission of the “negative energy” that this person radiates, due to some kind of pain, the suppressed aggression or simply malice, on us, which makes our harmonic state distort and leads to imbalance.
Often, we can not recognize such conditions, and temporarily, or permanently, we fall into severe psychological conditions, from which we can not get out. Many depressions, anxieties, and other seas are coming precisely because of the negative energy that can come from the environment, from other people, but also from ourselves, our own illusions, hard experiences or wrong attitudes. In this case, it is necessary to work on it, but this time the topic is to protect ourselves from the negative energy that comes from us.
It is necessary to program your subconscious mind to not receive any other influences that may disturb your energy balance. There are many ways trough you can learn how to protect yourself from negative psychic energy, but we will start with something simple…
Beginner level: Exercise that can help you
Imagine that you are in the egg of pure white light! Imagine the positive side effects of the energy, as well as the brightness of the glittering white. These influences can slightly increase your energy egg, give it greater density or vigor.
On the other hand, there are also negative influences, in the form of dirty, unbalanced and shattered light and energy. Imagine how such influences are repelled from the edge of the light egg that surrounds you. If you do this exercise every day, you will program your subconscious not to receive harmful energy and to receive only what is useful to you. Also, you should try not to affect anyone negatively, because you also send signals that you want others to deal with you.
You can repeat an exercise with an egg every time you feel the need. In your inner space you will sometimes see clear images, sometimes only light, and at times you will only feel the charge. Do not get excited and practice the exercise calmly, whatever happens. Remember that the only purpose is your energy protection.
Pray – The importance of inner peace
What can we gain and achieve in the outside world if we do not have inner peace? And one of the ways to achieve it is through prayers we say.
In fact, most of the things we do and work are just to bring us peace. But peace cannot come from outside. Even if we escape from all that irritates us and disturbs us and we run to a faraway place, where we are completely lonely and where complete tranquility and untouched purity of nature prevail, we will continue to persecute our own thoughts, anxieties, worries, desires – things that are in us, in our own mind.
How to find inner peace
Therefore, there is no reason not to try to gain inner peace right now and here, where we are, face to face with all external interferences. If prayers make us feel really well for at least 10-15 minutes and if we feel that deep inner peace fills us, we will also feel that external things that led us to madness are no longer so disturbing.
If at least for a minute we experience complete peace, we will see that much of what we gave an enormous significance is not important at all. We may even wonder, “Have I been so disturbed that I behaved in this way because of this?” When we really have deep inner peace in ourselves, we have no more need to prove, discuss, and pass the blame. No, when we have peace, we can look at things objectively, such as they are, and to act purposefully, just as the situation so requires. Inner peace through prayers is the key to the proper functioning of the outside world.
How to prepare yourself for prayers
Breathe peace, exhale unrest. Try to feel that every time you breathe in, you let into your body peace, endless peace. The opposite of peace is anxiety. When you are breathing out, try to feel that you are cleansing up anxiety from yourself, as well as anxiety that you see around you. When you breathe in this way, you will see that your anxiety leaves you …
Now, what to do with the negative thoughts that are already in us? Compared to the previous case, it is very difficult to throw them out. But we can do it! How? Again by stretching our consciousness. We have a body; in this body are those bad forces that took the form of ugly, harmful thoughts. If we can develop our physical consciousness to be elastic as an elastic band, we will feel that through a conscious effort, by the aspiration, we will grow our entire body. We grow, grow, grow our entire body to the Infinite. We grow the canvas of white consciousness. The moment we feel that Infinity is stretched like a canvas of white consciousness, we will see that it is a whole purity. We pray with positive thoughts and wishes, we pray for the path that is in front of us.