One of the most liberating things I have experienced in my personal prayer time is learning to pray structured prayers. Long seen as the enemy of true spirit-led prayer, structured prayers were neglected by my tradition in favor of spontaneous prayer. I have found though that praying structured prayers can be, in fact, better for spiritual growth than spontaneous prayers. One can only spontaneously pray “Lord God I just come before you today and thank you for x, y, and z” so many times before it feels a bit stale. I am not saying there is not a time or a place for personal petitions and spontaneous prayers, but lately I have been feeling that structured prayer may have gotten a bad rap in my tradition.
One thing I have been working on is a rule of prayer. For those of you who do not know what that means, a rule of prayer is simply an outline of prayer to be followed every day. The rule of prayer is planned out in advance and one then practices their prayer life according to the rule they adopted. So in light of this I ask anyone reading to comment on if you have a rule of prayer, and if so please share it.
Sojourneyman 