Finding Rest in Prayer - Healing 2024

Summary

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Rest is important for your body, mind, and even your soul. God wants you to experience the true rest that He alone can offer, and invites you to be present to Him in prayer to come into that peace. In this talk, Danielle Bean speaks about the four different ways you can approach God through prayer and offers practical tips for your own prayer life.

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Reflective Study Guide Questions

“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
Matthew 11:28-30

1. How do you approach prayer? Do you look at prayer as another item on your to-do list or as a way to earn God’s love? Do you find rest in your prayer?

2. Which form of prayer do you tend to do most often–Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, or Supplication? Which haven’t you done in a while?

3. Too much noise–both physical and mental–can cause anxiety and can make true, restful prayer difficult. How can you find more silence in your daily life?

4. How often do you pray? Do you make time for it every day? How can you prioritize prayer in your life?

Text: Finding Rest in Prayer

Hello friends, I’m Danielle Bean. I am a writer, speaker podcaster and I am honored to be a part of this Pray More Healing retreat. We all need healing in our lives, so I am thrilled to be part of an event that’s going to help people find the peace and healing that they really need. So this session is about finding rest in prayer. What does that mean? How do we do it? But before we get started, I just want to launch in first and foremost with a prayer. Will you join me?

Opening Prayer

In the name of the Father, And of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Lord, we give you thanks for this retreat we give you thanks for all of the participants here. We ask that you will bless, pour down your blessings and your mercies upon each person who is here present in this session with us. Help them to find the berest, the healing and the peace that we know that you want for them. We know that you’re present here because you’ve told us you’re present wherever two or more are gathered in your name, and that is what we are doing here. Thank you for the gift of technology that allows us to do this virtually. Help all of us to know you more, love you more and grow in the real healing and peace that you want for each and every one of us. In the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

The Meaning of Finding Rest in Prayer

Alright, let’s launch into this topic of finding rest in prayer. What exactly does that mean and how can we do it? Because it sounds so nice and so let’s talk about that because so many of us are tired, like you know, we’re perpetually exhausted. Our nation is perpetually sleep deprived. We fill our calendars with activities, there’s so much going on that so few of us can say we actually are at peace during most moments in our life. So few of us can say we actually find the rest that we need even physically and emotionally and mentally speaking. But we want to talk about spiritually and how that is different. How God wants you to have peace and wants you to find rest spiritually through prayer.

And when we talk about that, we’re talking about the very real connection between you and your creator. And this is where you are meant to be connected. This is where you find that peace, where you find that rest because this is what you’re made for. So this kind of rest that we talk about spiritually speaking is found through connection with God. And that’s what prayer is. That’s what prayer is supposed to be. They’re all different kinds of prayer, but we’re going to talk a little bit about some of the different kinds of prayer and some of the ways that we can find that rest. But spiritually speaking, what I want to point out to you is that God really wants this for you.

If you are struggling to find rest, if you feel restless and anxious much of the time, know that that’s not God’s plan for you. He has better things in mind for you. He wants you to be at peace. He wants you to know who you are. He wants you to know that you are loved and spiritually speaking, we can imagine that when we think about just a real exhale, have you ever had a very busy day where you’re running around physically and you’re emotionally and mentally distracted with lots of different obligations and things that you’re getting done? And at the end of that day, maybe the first time you sit down, your body might be aching, you might be very tired and you just breathe this sigh, this exhale. Ah.

And I like to think about prayer as an opportunity to exhale like that, to put all the other stuff down, to let it go and truly be present to God and have Him be present to you. He’s present with us even when we’re busy, even when we’re distracted. And that’s part of what I want to talk about here, is that when we are focusing on growing a relationship with the Lord and making regular time for prayer, we can find that peace and we can find that rest even in all the other parts of our day, even when you’re not on your knees in the chapel because that kind of connection with God is something that grows and it helps you to be grounded in who you are. It helps you to know your dignity and your worth and your purpose in life. So let’s talk about that a little bit. What is that exhale? How can we get to that exhale?

Matthew 11:28

And there’s a scripture passage that I want to share with you. It’s from Matthew 11 I’m going to read it to you here. It’s very short. So Matthew 11 , verse 28 , “Come to me all who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. For I am gentle and lowly in heart and you’ll find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” These are some of the promises of the Lord that are so appealing to us. We can hear these words and just know, don’t you feel a real longing for that kind of rest, that kind of peace, that kind of burden that is light and that’s what God is promising us through connection with Him. So let’s keep that passage in mind as we’re talking about some different forms of prayer here.

A Perspective on Prayer

So one thing that I want to point out to you is that sometimes we get caught up in this idea that prayer is something that we are going to do, something that we are going to accomplish, a thing that we’re going to impress God with or something that we do for God. And nothing can be further from the truth. It isn’t something we do. Prayer is less about doing and accomplishing something and more about being truly being present to God, truly being present and knowing His presence in your life and acknowledging Him. So that’s good news because sometimes we can begin to think about prayer as just another chore, just another to do item on my very long list.

And I know I felt this way, you know, especially when I was a young mom and we had a lot of little kids, life was exhausting and I didn’t have time for another thing. I didn’t want somebody else vying for my time and energy and attention. I felt like I had so little leftover at the end of the day. I just couldn’t do it. So I want to encourage you to think about how do you approach prayer? Do you think about it as a chore? Do you think about it as something you need to check off your list? Do you think about it as a way that you can earn God’s love, that you can be worthy of His love? Because those are all faulty ways of approaching prayer. And ultimately they’re going to lead to you not finding rest in prayer but becoming dissatisfied, becoming distracted, wanting to cross it off your to do list maybe by skipping it all together, prayer is something that is for you, it’s a gift. It’s a gift from God. And the ways that we can grow closer to God through prayer are truly a gift. And this is a gift that He wants for you.

So if you’re tempted and no judgment if you are, because we’ve all been there, I know I’ve done it many times to think about it as just another thing and feel burdened by it. That’s the last thing in the world that God wants from you. His burden is light. He doesn’t want you to feel like you’re failing it yet another thing because you don’t have carved out in your in your day all this time for prayer. He’s not looking for that. He’s looking for an authentic relationship with you. He wants you to know Him and love Him. Alright, so let’s talk a little bit about the different kinds of prayer. Maybe you’ve never thought about this before. Something that can be very helpful is to think about the different kinds of prayer.

A- C – T – S

And an easy way to remember the different kinds of prayer is simple little word Acts, A C T S. So this is adoration, confession, thanksgiving and supplication. These are the four different ways that we can pray and that God teaches us to pray. If you look in scripture, you see that when his disciples asked him, Lord teach us to pray, he taught him the Our Father. And it contains all of these different kinds of prayer. So let’s look at them each a little bit individually.

So first of all, adoration. This means giving praise to God. This is something that should ultimately come very naturally as you’re going throughout your day. It doesn’t have to be just set aside during your prayer time. Of course there are beautiful prayers and psalms that you can read and that you can pray with that give praise to God for His greatness, for His glory. You can do it if you’re just walking outside in the summertime. It’s beautiful here in my home in New Hampshire and I love to take a walk outside and just take in the natural beauty of lakes and woods and mountains and just taking a little walk in our, our field here. We live in a very country setting, but wherever you live, if you can go outdoors and give praise to God for his glory as expressed through creation and recognize that that is a very real form of prayer and that feels wonderful, it feels wonderful to notice the beauty around you and give thanks for it. That’s another one of the, it’s another one of the kinds of prayer. But to praise God for how good He is, how great He is, you know what else it does. When we’re praying in this way and praising God that He is mighty and that He’s good, that He can do all things, we’re reminding ourselves of His omnipotence. That means He can do anything. Scripture tells us nothing is impossible with God.

And that’s true. We know that’s true. And yet sometimes we can forget and we can begin in our own minds to put limits on God. And through our prayer time when we are adoring God and praising God and highlighting all of His qualities, praising Him for His goodness, we’re reminding ourselves of His goodness and reminding ourselves that we can trust in His goodness that He is indeed good, giving Him that praise. And He can indeed do all things. Because sometimes we feel burdened and we find that we can’t find rest because we feel like everything counts on us. I know I do this all the time. I find myself lying awake in the middle of the night worrying about some problem or a situation or a health issue or a financial thing. And in those moments I need to remind myself God is in charge. And that’s what prayer does when we adore God. When we give praise to God, we remind ourselves that God is in charge and it encourages us to let go of those things and let go of the anxiety.

Confession: A Kind of Prayer

Also, the next kind of prayer is confession. So this of course refers to the sacrament. Of course you can receive the sacrament, but just in your own prayer time, saying sorry to God for the things that you’ve done wrong, it’s a really good thing to make a daily habit of doing. An examine perhaps at the end of your day, looking back through your day and seeing the things that went right and then the things that went not right, maybe the choices you made that were wrong, things that you’ve done that you need to ask forgiveness for. Now, this doesn’t always feel comfortable, it doesn’t make you feel great to think about the things that you’ve messed up, but it is a really important part of us just on a human level. We need to acknowledge our own weaknesses and our failures.

Have you ever gone to the sacrament of confession and come out and just feel like you’re walking on air, right? It feels so good to relieve yourself of that burden because in a very real sense, sin hurts us. We hurt ourselves and we hurt other people and we hurt God’s church when we sin. And confession frees us of that, of course the sacrament, but also asking for forgiveness just daily in our daily prayer habit, asking for forgiveness. Also, this reminds us once again that we are not in charge. We don’t have that burden. God is in charge. It reminds us that we are weak and that we fail without Him. Reminds us how much we need him. And it’s in relying on him just like little children, He calls on us to be childlike, not childish. There’s a difference, not to be throwing tantrums like a child, but to be trusting as a child is unquestioning.

Do you ever think back to your childhood and whoever the loving adults were in your life, hopefully parents who took care of you? I know I can look back and just think, gosh, I never questioned for a minute like that. They had things under control. You know, when you’re very young, you just, you trust that they’ve got stuff figured out and you’re not worried about all of these things. That’s how God wants us to be in a very real sense, in a very much larger sense throughout our lives. He wants us to grow in trusting Him. And part of how we do that, as uncomfortable as it is sometimes, is admitting our own weaknesses and failures. Asking God for forgiveness.

Praying Through Thanksgiving

Alright, the next way of praying is through Thanksgiving. This is a beautiful way to pray if you don’t already. I want to encourage you to make a daily habit of being grateful in an intentional way. You know, even scientific studies back up the idea that people who are grateful are happier and healthier. It’s an important thing. We’re made to be grateful. It helps us in so many ways physically, emotionally, and definitely spiritually to be grateful to God for all the good things He’s done for us. And sometimes in life. I know it can be very hard if you’re going through something very difficult right now, if you’re struggling to heal from something very hard, then I know it is hard to be grateful. It needs to be a choice to be grateful. But we always have something to be grateful for. You woke up this morning, your heart is beating in your chest, you’re breathing air into your lungs, your life is a gift. And we’re grateful for that. I know it can be really hard to do, but I have really benefited from the practice of trying to make a habit of being grateful even when things are hard, looking for what you can be grateful for.

There was one time that stands out to me that it was several years ago now. I got up early in the morning because I had a flight to catch. And when I stepped down the stairs onto the main floor of our house, there’s about an inch of water on our hardwood floors down there. And it was a pipe that had burst in the night and our floors were just flooded and damaged. And what a terrible way to wake up in the morning, you know? And I remember in the time just trying to be very deliberate because I was very discouraged and I had to leave in a little bit to catch a flight. It was still important that I make that trip and I was stressed in the moment and I just remember pausing and just telling myself, you know what I’m going to look for, what to be grateful for.

You know, thanks be to God that we have running water in our homes, that we have a working washing machine and dryer that were right there, you know, next to me in the bathroom while I was kind of sitting down and ruminating over the situation. Thanks be to God we live in this beautiful home. Thanks be to God that we know people or have access to people who can come and help us. Thanks be to God. We have home insurance. All of these things, you can always find something even in the thick of a moment. And the more you can make a habit of doing that, the more you are going to have peace. Because you can begin to see God’s hand in all of it. You can begin to see the ways that God is continually providing for you, even when He’s asking you to go through something difficult, even when He’s asking you to give up something that you want to stay attached to. So being grateful, intentionally grateful, and speaking out loud, the things that we are thankful to God for, is so vitally important. So find a way to be doing that through your daily prayer habit.

Supplication as Form of Prayer

And then the final one, the final form of prayer is supplication. And this is where some of us get caught up. We get stuck here sometimes. We kind of only go to prayer when we’re asking for something. This is a very legitimate form of prayer. God asks us to come to Him, knock on the door, ask and you shall receive. He wants us to come to Him with all of our needs. But if that’s the only way that we’re praying, we’re praying in a very limited way. But again, just like asking for forgiveness and giving praise to God can remind us that we are tiny, weak, and frail creatures. In that God is God of the universe in charge of all things. And that He loves us with an unimaginable, unfathomable love, that He forgives us and shows us mercy. The fact that all of these things can teach us who God is and who we are can give us peace, can give us that rest that we’re seeking in prayer and bringing our needs to God can give us that rest as well. Have you ever had a problem that you were ruminating over and you just really needed to talk it out? Maybe you talk to your spouse or talk to a good friend about it or went and talked to a priest about it or a spiritual advisor of some sort and you just feel so much better afterwards?

I know for me, my husband Dan, is a real gift to me because when I am struggling with something, I just know, I know when I get that feeling, all of a sudden when I feel overwhelmed by something and I’m not sure, and I find myself almost, you know, perpetually thinking about this thing, this problem or this issue and not sure how to handle it. I know I just need to talk to him. I need to talk it out with him. He doesn’t always have the magical solution, but talking it through is very helpful and he has that outside perspective so much more so when we bring our needs, when we bring our stuff to God, we all have stuff that we’re carrying around that we are burdened by. God tells us right there in scripture, come to me, you who are burdened, what are you burdened by? What are you feeling? He’s asking you to bring it to him. So supplication is that form of prayer.

And I mentioned the examine earlier, and that’s a really beautiful way to make all of these parts of prayer and everyday habit for you. And maybe as I was talking about some of these forms of prayer, you thought, eh, I haven’t really prayed that way in a while. Well, I want to challenge you. I want to encourage you during this time that you’re going through and doing this retreat, spend a little time in that form of prayer and then consider doing a daily examination And it doesn’t have to take a lot of time. You can go online and find lots of different resources for ways to pray and examine that’ll walk you through all different apps will kind of help you through this daily examination. And it’s really just looking back on your day and seeing where God was present in it, but then looking ahead and making a commitment to grow in your relationship with the Lord in the coming day.

Some Practical Ideas to Find Rest in Prayer

Alright, before I run out of time here, I do want to share some practical ideas, some practical ways that you can find peace and find rest in prayer. And the first is to look for silence. Look for ways that you can have more silence in your life. Because if you’re feeling anxious, I think you’ve got too much noise in your life, you’ve got too much busyness and distraction and background noise perhaps in the form of real noise, like machines that we have or devices that we have beeping and buzzing and putting out music and podcasts and entertainment or perhaps even just information news overload. Perhaps if you’re feeling anxious, you probably have too much noise in your life, too much media, too much activity, too much commitment, maybe too many conversations, idle conversations.

Look for ways that you can have more silence in your life. This is a real way that you can find rest in your prayer. Not only rest in your prayer, but rest that stays with you. That ideally, when we sit down to pray, we are growing in relationship with God. Prayer changes us. I like to think about this because it can feel very encouraging to me that every time we pray, even if we’re not feeling it, prayer changes us. God comes into our hearts and He changes us. He heals us. He gives us the grace that we need even if you’re not feeling it. And prayer really is a discipline because sometimes you’ll think of a thousand other things you’d rather do than sit down to pray. And yet when we do it, when we do make that a daily habit, that peace and that stillness that we find in silent prayer, whether it’s at an adoration chapel or in a corner of your bedroom stays with us. That kind of centering of ourselves in God stays with us even throughout our busy days.

Ways to Incorporate Silence in Prayer

So look for ways that you can have more silence. And our world doesn’t like silence. Our world looks to fill up every space with noise and distraction and entertainment and occupation. Think about some ways that you can be deliberate about having silence in your day. Might be as simple as giving your phone a curfew. I’m a big fan of this practice. Do you have a certain point in the day where you’re going to put your phone away? Phones are great, but we have to admit that detrimental effects, that perpetually looking at our screens, causing our lives, that’s pulling us away from God. That’s not rest, that’s busyness, that’s work. God didn’t tell us that busyness is a virtue. And I think sometimes we fall prey to that kind of thinking, beginning to believe that being busy is in itself something that we need to kind of aspire to. But that’s not true. Jesus Himself gives us the example in the gospels. Time and time again we read, Jesus went away to pray. He would get up early in the morning before anybody else was awake and go away to pray. I sometimes read those and I think what? Like Jesus is God, why does he need to go away to pray? But here He is setting this beautiful example for us of what we need to do.

Now, maybe you’re not going to get up before everybody else in the morning and climb to a mountaintop like Jesus did, to be in silence and stillness and pray. Maybe you can’t go into the desert for days, but every one of us can in some sense go away to pray in our lives. How do you set time aside every day for prayer? Because if you are not praying every day, and I mean in a deliberate way, having time set aside, even if you’re going to get distracted, even if you’re going to get interrupted, I know, I understand people are busy, but have that plan in the first place for when you’re going to pray.

So part of valuing silence and stillness is making room for it in our calendars in a very real way. Maybe you want to really put it on your calendar. When are you going to do it? Think about, spend a little time right now thinking about where in your day you have time to pray or you could make time to pray. Because a lot of times people say, I’m so busy I don’t have time to pray. But I want to challenge you if that’s what you’re thinking. Like what do you have time for? Do you have time for scrolling through social media on your phone or time for watching Netflix? Do you have time for idle conversations or reading books or whatever it is that you like to fill your leisure time with? Do you have time for those things? Then you do have time to pray.

Even if it’s just five minutes, and I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with any of those things, but let’s keep them in their proper place. Let’s make sure prayer is coming first and now saying prayer is coming first is a good reminder that let’s give it priority in our days. And a great way to do that if you possibly can is to do it first thing in the morning. Give God your first fruits, your first hour of the day. It doesn’t have to be an hour, but your first time in the morning. This works really well for me. There was a time years ago that I realized I was making physical fitness an important part of my days. And that’s great, it can be very healthy and it’s an important priority for us to take care of ourselves. But I wasn’t finding time to pray and I thought this is a little bit backwards. Why do I get up first thing in the morning and get that workout in? And yet I’m telling myself I don’t have time to pray.

So I switched things around a bit and now I do spend that first time in the morning as much as I possibly can, just sitting in quiet prayer. Whatever that looks like for you might be praying a rosary, might be sitting with a prayer aid of some sort. Might be just sitting in silence or reading scripture might be using an app. There’s so many great a digital aids out there that can help you to pray and make it a regular habit in your life. Take advantage of those if you like them. And there’s nothing wrong if you don’t like them. You have the equipment that you need to pray because you have a human soul and that is what you need. So set aside time and then set aside space. I find this as really helpful.

Incorporate Your Home In Your Prayer Time

If you have a space in your home where you are going to pray every day, it really helps to reinforce what you’re doing during that time and enforce that it’s an important part of your life. So this might be just a chair in the corner of your bedroom. It might be a space in your living room, for me, that’s what it is. And it doesn’t mean you don’t use that space for other things throughout the day, but I always go to that same place. I have a little drawer there that has all of my different things in it. My books that I like to use or my rosary or my earbuds if I’m going to use an app to kind of walk me through a meditation.

And so look for ways that you can incorporate that kind of physical element of prayer in your home spaces because that really reinforces that this is an everyday part of your life. It’s a priority for you. And when you go to that space, when you make it a regular part of your day, this is what I find when you sit down there, your whole perspective on life changes and you do have that exhale.

It’s like, here I am now, Lord, here I am ready to receive you. Open to whatever it is that you want to give me. And praying those different forms of prayer, praising Him, asking for forgiveness where you need it, offering Him thanks and then asking Him for the things that you need. Make that an everyday part of your everyday routine. And I promise you, our Lord is going to meet you there in that space. He’s going to give you the love that He has for you, the unique and personal love that He has for you. He’s going to give you the grace that you need for your state in life and ultimately, He’s going to give you rest. It’s one of the most beautiful promises that we have in scripture. And He will not fail to meet you there and answer that promise for you. Thanks so much for being part of this session. I look forward to connecting with you next time.

About Danielle Bean

Danielle Bean is creator and host of Girlfriends, an award-winning podcast that supports and encourages Catholic women from all walks of life. She is author of ten books, including You Are Enough, and Giving thanks and Letting Go, and Whisper: Finding God in the Everyday. Danielle has a special heart for families and she encourages others to find humor in daily challenges and the joy God intends for every one of us. It is in her primary vocation to marriage and motherhood that Danielle finds the inspiration for all of her work. Subscribe to her Substack and learn more at DanielleBean.com.