Who Taught You To Pray?

My earliest memories of prayer are kneeling by the side of my childhood bed with my mom and my younger brother and sister, engaged in the nightly ritual of saying our prayers. I can also remember the nine of us around the dinner table as a family and saying grace before digging into the meal. Beyond home, my parents made sure we attended church services, and I recall bowing my head in the pew while prayers were recited and peeking to see if everyone else had their head down. So, in answer to the question it was definitely my parents who taught me to pray.

As my years wore on, the inputs and instruction on prayer came from many different sources: formal religious teaching, devotionals, mentors, Scripture, and observations. Speaking of observing others, to this day I vividly remember coming home late in my teens after a night of carousing and seeing my father kneeling in the dark alone by his bed. My prayer life grew and advanced. And yet many times, it was stagnant or absent. Today I would say that prayer is central to my being – varied, alive, foundational, critical to who I am and my relationship to Jesus. Am I good at prayer? Who knows? I do know this: I certainly haven’t arrived…I keep working at it because it is an enriching discovery. I got here through a lot of teaching and good examples. At the same time, my prayer life today came about through a ton of practice, of just doing it.

Stop for a moment (really stop) and think of your own journey with prayer. How has it developed over the years and from what forces? Give thanks for the legacy of others pouring into your prayer life. Now substitute generosity into that same thought process. Who taught you how to be generous? How has it grown in your life? Like prayer, generosity is a spiritual practice. We do it because we are imitators of Christ. He was the best at prayer, and he is/was the best at giving. We may have learned generosity very early in life from a parent or grandparent. We may have advanced our exposure and understanding through teachings, examples, and personal experiences. It certainly isn’t easy to practice generosity. Just like prayer, we may go through periods of stagnation and find ourselves going through the motions or asking, “What’s the point?” But remember that one of the best ways to get better is through practice.

Practicing anything is hard work. Think about a child taking piano lessons. It is drudgery, but on the other side, somewhere out there, is beautiful music. This is the same way with prayer and with generosity. The process is transformational. It changes us. First and foremost, it brings us closer to Jesus. Then, it has the chance to impact the world around us. This is why Dynamis Ministries exists: To be a nudge or help in the spiritual journey of generosity; To be that input that furthers your growth; To provide methods and ideas to express giving; To bring philanthropy to the everyday common person; To facilitate a personal and custom plan of how you might put your own generosity into action. And why? Because it is transformational. Because it can impact the world. Because it brings us closer to Jesus.

Dennis Gorski is the Executive Director of Dynamis Ministries as well as the president of Wela Financial, a financial services agency serving the greater Chicagoland region. Dennis is passionate about providing financial wisdom to help people prosper financially as well as mature spiritually.