Two and a Half hours Straight in Prayer
I also discovered that there's quite a benefit to having lengthy unbroken times of prayer and meditation.
I recently joined a group of men who have made a commitment to meet together a couple of times a month to hold each other accountable to our spiritual progress. One of the best ways to see growth happen in your life is to journey with others who have similar goals as yours. In this group, we challenge each other to go further and deeper in our walk with Christ.
At one of our meetings, I identified a spiritual challenge that I wanted to undertake: twice a week, I will spend 2.5 hours straight with the Lord in prayer and other spiritual practices. This poses a bit of a challenge for a modern monastic. These days, I've been having no trouble averaging 3.5 hours of prayer and meditation per day. But that's usually broken up into 3 or more portions spread out during a typical day. Going 2.5 hours straight is something I'm not accustomed to and it would pose a unique challenge for myself. It's good to challenge your spiritual life so that you can put some effort in order for you to grow. I managed to complete the challenge with some difficulty. Here's what I learned about the experience.
I learned that in order for me to get 2.5 hours of uninterrupted time for prayer, I needed to prepare. A lack of discipline will prevent me from even finding time to actually undertake the challenge. I had to choose in advance which two days of the week I could feasibly do this. Since I sometimes have meetings in the evenings, I could only do it on the days where there were none scheduled. I reserved those days for this spiritual challenge. I also had to get my wife on board by letting her know that I'm doing this spiritual activity and that I'm going to need 2.5 hours of uninterrupted time. My wife is very supportive of my spiritual journey because she sees positive changes in me. So, it wasn't difficult to convince her about needing some secluded time for myself. I also made sure that I would make it up to her by scheduling evenings for us to be together where we could do stuff like watch an episode of The Chosen (it's the only media I watch these days). As a modern monastic with a modern family, I must make sure that my wife's relational and emotional needs are being met as my spiritual needs are being met too.
I also discovered that there's quite a benefit to having lengthy unbroken times of prayer and meditation. I often felt the presence of God beyond the 2-hour mark. I had a heightened sense of awareness of His presence. I even had an encounter where I was so overwhelmed by reading God's Word that I had a hard time getting off the floor. The same thing would sometimes happen when I went into worshiping God with singing. There were unique and interesting experiences that I still don't completely understand. Perhaps I'll process them further in the weeks to come. I do want to say though that these unique experiences didn't happen every single time I went 2.5 hours straight in prayer and meditation. They only happened sometimes. And they happened at God's desire, not mine. But I believe that by spending a lot of uninterrupted time with the Lord, it could possibly put me in a position to encounter things like this should the Lord desire it.
Barnabas the Monastic
Servant of Christ. Husband. Dad. Modern Monastic. I have a wild ambition in life: get as close to the Lord Jesus Christ as I can while on earth. I explore and integrate ancient Christian monk wisdom in modern everyday life. Lives in Canada.
