The Mystery and Power of Prayer Pastoral Care for Pastors

It may sound too familiar to say that we connect with God through prayer. That statement may be something we know but not something we experience. We give mental assent to it as a true statement even while yearning and longing for a deeper experience of relationship with God.
My journey of prayer has seen many peaks and valleys. Like in this image, I often find myself descending into a valley while looking ahead to the next peak.
In this article, I want to share four phases I've gone through in my journey of learning how to connect with God in prayer. My hope is that you will find value in my experience for growing in your own practice of prayer.

First Phase: God as the Cosmic Santa Claus
I grew up "going to church." I imagine you could say I was "born and raised" in the church. Yet my concept of prayer was very anemic. Sure, we prayed at church, but it was the "opening" and "closing" types of prayer, along with a blessing offered before we shared the Lord's Supper together. And we prayed at home, though it was mainly a blessing before we ate or my father praying with my brother and me before we went to bed.
I knew that I ought to pray. And I knew that I ought to include praise and thanksgiving. But other than thanking God for the day and for anything good that had happened to me that day, I did not have a robust way of praising and worshiping God in prayer.
This was shaped by my view of God at the time -- a very weak, limited view that saw God as the Cosmic Santa Claus. He saw everything, he knew if I was awake, and he definitely knew if I was bad or good. As an adolescent, and then a teenager, I was fully aware that there was enough "bad" to warrant the Cosmic Santa Claus to not send "gifts."
So my prayers were mainly of the "Forgive me for X, forgive me for Y" variety. I would do this in bed at night before I went to sleep. Many nights I would fall asleep scanning my mind for any unconfessed sin because I was fearful of missing some sin that I had overlooked. What would God think? After all, he was already aware of any sin that had been committed; how could I not be?
In summary, I found this phase of prayer fearful, even while it cultivated an awareness of God.
Second Phase: Finding Other Prayer Exercises
I must have known that there was more to prayer than what I was experiencing because I kept with it and I kept exploring it, especially in my junior and senior years of high school.
At my local Christian bookstore, I'd hunt for books about prayer. I found expositional teachings about prayer, prayer devotionals, and Charismatic books about prayer that I had no capacity to understand at the time. But most importantly, I found tools I could use to help me pray.
I ran across the A.C.T.S. acronym (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication). This was helpful because it gave me a framework. I realized that I could break up my prayer time into different areas. I still struggled with adoration but found my groove in confession. Thanksgiving could be tough, and I began to learn that this "toughness" came out of a skewed sense of prayer -- my belief that prayer was about asking God for things.
During this phase of prayer, I began to learn that prayer was not only about asking God for things, but also thanking God for things. But prayer was still transactional -- it was about making the exchange of thanksgiving and confession, the credits and debits, between God and myself.

Third Phase: Liturgical Prayer and Psalms
In college, I was exposed to a wide experience of Christian traditions. This was more helpful to me than I recognized at the time, and I learned without knowing it from many others.
I was particularly intrigued with the vibrancy that many of my new friends prayed with. It was a vibrancy I was lacking. I knew something was missing in my relationship with God but I didn't know what.
I took an upper division-level class on Christian ministry with a professor who became very influential for me. He introduced us to