Managing a Meandering Mind
Turn your prayer distractions into God-directed dialogue.
By Brad Preston, guest columnist

Like the prodigal son, my mind wanders recklessly into a far country when I pray. In moments of solitude when I am just getting close to God, my brain shifts into gear and speeds off for the highway.

I tried making a list.

I tried walking around with my eyes open.

I tried praying out loud; I tried praying real loud.

The harder I tried to eliminate the distractions, the more frustrating they became.

Then an idea came to me unexpectedly. What if the interruptions are God's effort to dialogue with me in prayer? Perhaps God has a better handle on prayer requests than I do. What if I allowed him to use the distractions to direct my prayers?

I decided to surrender my prayer agenda and to stop fighting the interruptions. Instead of battling my wandering mind, I lift up each random thought in prayer when it comes: "Lord I'm thinking about doughnuts. You got any idea why?" Sometimes praying on it clears the thought away, but other times God uses the thought to speak to me (like convicting me that there's a hole in our relationship).

Besides opening a new world of interactive dialogue with God, my learning to pray the interruptions instead of fighting them, I discovered, has other benefits.

Don't go there.
At times my prayers are interrupted by what appear to be inappropriate subjects-lustful images, anger about the ministry, complaints. My response used to be denial. I didn't want to admit those thoughts could enter the sacred place of prayer. Frustrated, I would push them away. If they came back, I pushed harder. But the pushing became a distraction in itself.

One morning in prayer I was distracted by my irritation with a particular Christian. I was tugged toward bitterness by my ineffective attempts to disciple stubborn believers.

"Just once, Lord," I prayed, "could you give me someone I didn't have to push so hard?"

God answered, "Why don't you let me take care of it?" God's reply showed that I had been harboring a burden that wasn't mine to carry. Had I ignored the distraction, I would likely have kept carrying it.

Sometimes God uses praying through the thoughts to cleanse them from my mind. Other times I pour out the struggle in all its strife like one of David's psalms. Either way, it has awakened a new honesty and transparency in my relationship with God.

Don't go there, either.
I like sticking with my prayer list because a list is safe. A list can be used to pray for other people's needs while conveniently overlooking your own shortfalls.

But heeding the interruptions doesn't allow for that careful avoidance. It forces me to address sins, regrets, and shortcomings I normally wouldn't choose to include on my list. Now when my prayers are interrupted with, You need to devote more time to being intimate with God, I don't just push the thought away, I stop to pray about it.

If there's guilt tied to the issue I've been sweeping under the rug, praying about it brings forgiveness. And since I'm actually praying about it instead of ignoring it, I'm more likely to make changes in those areas.

By letting the Lord add his items to the prayer list, and by willingly accepting a distraction as an area to explore with Him, I'm doing a lot more listening.

The pastor's smooth and eloquent public prayer is much different from the struggles most of us wrestle with in private. But I'm finding relief in an area that used to frustrate me. My prodigal mind is beginning to follow the path home-the path that takes me straight to the Father.

Brad Preston pastors in Bradford, Pennsylvania.

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February 24, 2004