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The single most important advice I can give you about how to pray is this: Begin! It is that simple, and if you can read these words and understand what they mean, than you already have the tools to pray.
“Prayer is easier than we think. We want to think it is too hard or too high and holy for us, because that gives us an excuse for not doing it. This is false humility. We can all do it, even the most sinful, shallow, silly and stupid of us.
You do not have to master some mystical method.
You do not have to master any method at all. Can you talk to a friend? Then you can talk to God, for He is your Friend. And that is what prayer is. You do not have to wait until you become a saint. This is the way to become a saint.” - Peter Kreeft
In regards to making excuses for ourselves for not taking the time to pray, Romano Guardini put it this way.
“In matters of prayer we are only too apt to deceive ourselves because, generally speaking, man does not enjoy praying. He easily experiences boredom, embarrassment, unwillingness, or even hostility. Everything else appears to him more attractive and more important. He persuades himself that he has not got the time, that there are other more urgent things to do; but no sooner has he given up prayer than he applies himself to the most trivial tasks. We should stop lying to God. Better to say openly, “I do not wish to pray,” than to make such excuses. Better not to resort to specious justifications such as, for instance, tiredness, but to declare, “I do not feel like praying.” This may sound decorous, but at least it is the truth which leaves the way open, whereas self-deception does not.”
Prayer is not such a rare thing to find time to do everyday. Part of being human means that we are conscious. Conscious comes from the Latin word meaning “to think with”. This means, that unlike animals, we do not think by ourselves. When we think we are actually having a conversation with ourselves. We are constantly talking to ourselves through our thoughts. Why does this mean that we cannot just have a conversation with God?
There are three simple steps that produce a very simple method to prayer that you will never forget.
(the following excerpt written by Peter Kreeft)
“Stop, look, and listen” is what you do at a railroad crossing. Prayer is like a railroad crossing. God is like a great train crossing the tracks of your life. You want to get run over by this train! So here is how you put yourself on the tracks before God.
First, STOP! Stop doing everything else you are doing. Stop worrying about anything else in the whole world except your prayer to God right now. Stop being Martha; if you don’t, you cannot be Mary ( see Lk 10:38-41). You cannot sit at the Lord’s feet while you are running around on your own feet. You cannot hear him if you are frothing at the mouth and fussing at the fingers. You cannot LOOK unless you first STOP; you cannot practice the presence of God if you are just too busy for him.
The first step, STOP, is in itself the easiest one. But you will probably find it the hardest if you are a typically modern American: busy, active, outgoing. Most of us are like rolling stones: we have too much momentum to slow down. If you do find this hard, remember that it is only hard to you; in itself it is easy. And remember that it is necessary: you have to stop even to smell the roses; all the more necessary to stop to talk to God!
The second step is LOOK: look at God with the eye of your soul, the eye of your mind. I mean the eye of faith. You cannot see God with your body’s eye, and the eye of your reason is very weak; but the eye of faith is strong because it is God’s own gift to you, the eye God provided. Faith knows that God is real, and faith knows that God is present.
Look means simply LOOK. It is hard only because it is so simple. That is all. By a simple act of will, turn your attention to him. You cannot talk to someone if you do not look at him.
And this is going to be a two-way conversation. You are going to talk, but you are also going to listen. And you cannot listen to him unless you first look at him.
So the last step is LISTEN.
In a conversation, if you are the wisest, it makes sense for you to do most of the talking. If the other person is wiser, it makes sense for you to do most of the listening. The wiser the other is, the more listening you want to do. Well, prayer is conversation with God, and it makes no sense for us to do most of the talking. We ought to be listening most of the time.
But, you may object, we cannot hear God’s voice as we hear the voice of another human being. True, but we can hear God’s voice in other ways. We hear him in nature, which is his art. We hear him in his providential directing of our lives, and in the lessons in human history, and in the “still, small voice” of our conscience, God’s interior prophet. We hear him loud and clear in Scripture, his inspired Word deliberately given to us. One way of praying is listening to God’s voice in Scripture, reading Scripture as God’s Word-which is exactly what it is!
How do we listen to his voice? With the ear of our heart. With love. Love has ears, as love has eyes. Just be there, and love him, and let him love you.
What will happen then? What will we hear? Let God take care of that. Seek only him, do not use him as a means to seek any other end. He is not your Santa, he is your Savior. I cannot tell you what he will give you except for one thing: he will give you himself. He will give you more of himself the more you want him, that is, the more you love him. He wants to pour infinite riches into your soul; prayer is a way of opening up your soul so that more of God can enter.
In order to listen, we must look. In order to look, we must stop. And in order to stop doing things, we must first be doing things. God gave us a world in which we are to work. But God also gave us a Sabbath, in which we are to pray. Why is the first third of the prayer-stopping-the hardest? Is your other work really so important that you cannot stop it for one Sabbath part out of seven to turn to the One who gave you your other work, in fact who gave you your very existence? You can take the time to pray the “stop, look and listen” prayer in just one minute; can you not give God just one minute? The first minute of each hour? One part of our sixty? Is that too much of a Sabbath rest for you?
It is a simple, easy, beautiful practice, and I absolutely guarantee you that if you do it, you will love it and cherish it and be very grateful for the suggestion.
Can you stop reading this right now and pray for one minute? If you cannot, you are in serious trouble; you are addicted to work and action as to a drug. You are a slave. If you can but you will not, you are in even more serious trouble; for that means that you do not love God as much as you love whatever else you are doing. Perhaps what you are doing is reading about loving God! So you have no time to love God because you are reading about loving God? That is insane.
We are all insane. That is what original sin means. Sin is insanity. It is preferring finite joy to infinite joy, creatures to the Creator, an unhappy, Godless self to a happy, God-filled self. Only God can save us from this disease. That is what the name “Jesus” means: “God saves.” He has done his part, on the Cross. Our part is to accept him.
A good way to act out our acceptance right now would be to stop reading this book and pray for at least one minute. Will you give God one minute? Please do not give me, the author of these words, that minute and rob God. Please rob me and give it to God. Stop reading me and read God. Stop listening to mean and listen to God.
Are you finished? Do not read another word until you are.
Now ask God to help you do that again and again for the rest of your life.