One of the most commonly asked questions among those who have left the religions of this world and have turned to the God of Israel is, “How do I pray?”

Those of us on this journey have followed the pattern of prophecy, we have sought out the Jew to learn how to know and serve our Creator. Our hunger and desire for this can lead us to copying the Jew in how they are commanded to serve God.

There are pros and cons, it is a part of the duty of a Jew to teach us about God, there are tons of things we can glean from their service but we are not to become like a mini or junior Jew. We are not given the exact same commands to serve God as the Jew. We are to be who God made us in the place where He planted us. Within our place in the world, we implement the knowledge and service of God that we learn from the Jews. We are not creating a new religion but becoming who were meant to be, returning to the path of Noah, Shem and Abraham.

So, as a non-Jewish person of the nations, how do we pray?

The short and direct answer to this question is – Pray to your Creator from your heart using your language and your personality.

That being said, there are those who seek and yearn for a deeper spiritual way to pray. In this series of blogs that is exactly what I hope, God willing to explore.

Lets begin:

The Hebrew word that is translated as ‘prayer is, ‘tefillah’. Tefillah is describes as a ‘connection’, it is one of the connection points we have with the Creator – its flow is primarily from a bottom-up direction. Meaning that this connection point is made from you to the Creator. This is why it is important for a person to speak to God from their own heart and soul in their own language.

It does not take long on this journey as we learn from the Jews that we find that they have a prayer book. Many of us from the nations while in our search to learn how to serve the Creator desire such a prayer book for ourselves. With the help of the rabbis there are now several Noahide prayer books.

These Noahide prayer books should be an aid to help us in our prayer life, they should not be used to form some kind of Noahide prayer ritual.

In this series of blogs we will be journeying into a certain section within the Jewish prayer book, to glean from it, and to help aid us in our desire to have more meaningful prayers.

As we begin this journey, I conclude Part 1 with a nugget about prayer from the Breslov Siddur (prayer book).

The Breslov Siddur is called, “Prayer To God Is My Life”. The name is derived from Psalms 42:9 “By day the Eternal will command His lovingkindness, and in the night His song shall be with me, a prayer unto the God of my life.”

The Publishers Preface in their siddur opens up with,

“Our Sages call prayer the ‘service of the heart’ (Taanis 2a). Prayer is an opportunity to focus on ourselves – to look deep into our hearts and discover our true aches and pains, our real joys and goals. Prayer helps us recognize who we are, and assess our relationship with God. Through prayer, we are not spectators to life but actual participants, because we can involve our whole heart and soul in connecting to our Creator”

a prayer unto the God of my life

Terry W. Hayes

12/2019

Photo Credit: Hanny Naibaho on Unsplash