Jewish Personal Prayer - Make A Time

Does making a time for Jewish personal prayer feel like one more obligation in your busy, crowded schedule? 

Are you wondering what you'll have to give up in order to set aside a special time to "do it right," and secretly plotting to avoid it because if you can't do it right you're not going to do it at all?

Image from Sefaria.org

Each one of us has the same 24 hours every day. Most hours are filled with obligations to other people and responsibilities we’ve taken upon ourselves.

Oh, and some of us spend increasingly more and more time unconsciously looking for fun and entertainment online, like this class, for example. It’s both fun and entertaining!

How are we supposed to find time to speak to the Almighty God of the Universe?

If the idea of talking to God in my own language without a script feels like an obligation, I will resist it. I don’t want another obligation, I want more freedom from obligations.

Most of us want fewer obligations and more freedom.

We want more freedom, yet we can’t figure out how to get it. Freedom to do what we want to do instead of what we have to do is a constant moment-to-moment challenge.

Torah stands as a reminder that God is an expert on the subject of freedom. We memorialize freedom on Shabbat and at Passover. And yet, we still yearn for it daily. We long for freedom as though we were still in Egypt trudging through mud pits and gathering straw.

What’s going on with us? I think we’ve forgotten the reason Pharoah finally let the Israelites abandon their mud pits in Egypt. Do you remember the reason?

In Exodus 9:1 God instructs Moses to tell Pharoah to “let my people go…” Usually we remember that part. But do you remember the rest of the verse? The whole verse is, “Let my people go to worship me.”

There’s a reason we were set free from slavery in Egypt – to worship God.

I think we forget that reason most of the time. We forget that our own personal relationship with our Creator, our Almighty God, is a gift. God gave us the gift of freedom to worship Him.

If we feel like slaves to our schedules and our obligations to other people, it’s probably because we’ve forgotten we are already free. We’ve been set free by God to worship God.

God set us free to worship Him, which usually starts with prayer. At least it does for me. It starts with praying to God, not watching Netflix or playing Fortnite or even golf. My freedom has been, is and will be based on worshipping God.

Making time to speak to my Almighty God is how I choose to be free instead of enslaved.

God is the expert on freedom, I am not. I am human and I forget to choose freedom. I need to talk to God and ask Him to help me to live the freedom he has already given me.

Finding the time for personal prayer is easy when I remember what God had already given me, and why.

God set us free from slavery to worship Him. That’s it. And it wasn’t just a one-time Exodus event 3500 years ago. It’s right now, in our lives today.

Praying for one minute, just saying, “Thank you, Lord,” is how I choose freedom every day.

Doing that, I start to notice other things I do. I start to put them in perspective when I notice what feels like slavery and what doesn’t.

Really, I actually start noticing obligations and decisions about what I do and how I invest or spend my time. When I spend my time playing games, it’s gone forever. When I invest my time praying, it’s an investment in this life and the next.

If I start feeling like a slave I say, right out loud, “Please help me remember you’ve already set me free to worship you, Lord.”

That’s a good start. Finding the time for personal prayer is not about tips and tricks. It’s about remembering the freedom I’ve been given during the 24 hours each day I have to spend or invest. It’s my choice. That’s how I remember to prioritize the time for personal prayer – I remember I have already been set free.

Mia's Little Song - All God's Time 

God is not old-fashioned

We all need Him everyday

Gotta fit Him in the schedule

It's all His time anyway

God is not too busy
To hear our every prayer

Gotta talk and gotta listen

To our God everywhere

Here's a short video (10 years old) of Jews talking about their relationship with traditional prayers:

This is my second post sharing about my own experiences with Jewish personal prayer and the experiences I'm collecting from others. Please feel free to share in the comments, or leave a message on 903-642-1449.