Creating a Prayer Partnership that Works for You

Imagine the feeling of your favorite holiday or birthday moment and times that times ten. That is the feeling of a powerful prayer partnership. It consists of love, surprise, recognition, intimacy, delight, and the visceral knowing someone has your back.

Contrast this with the feeling of being bogged down in complaints, disappointments, anger, unhealed messes … placed at your feet to fix. This is the heaviness of a prayer partnership that is misdirected.

Prayer partnering can change your life or can be a waste of precious time. I’ve experienced both. As my Prayer Partner (PP) and I are defining and playing with our partnership, I thought I’d share my notes and insights with you.

1. Choose a partner who has the same level of commitment to their spiritual practice as you do to yours. Now remember, I am a reincarnated monk and nun many times over and I can and have invested all day in prayer. To be with a praying lightweight isn’t a fair exchange and creates a disproportionate relationship. In choosing my current partner, I actively looked for over one year to find a dedicated minister who values prayer as a transformational tool and lives from her spiritual beliefs.

2. Establish logistics beginning with the date and time. We determined weekly for one hour and chose a consistent day.

3. We begin with an opening prayer. We ask each other who feels it is theirs to do, then that one of us does it.

4. Each one of us has about twenty minutes to give an update and make our request. Updates are not complaints. They are insightful recognitions of the internal alchemy that is happening within us coupled with our desires as we move forward in the week.

5. Should one of us have an insight, we may ask if we can offer it. We are not about fixing, coaching, helping, or teaching. We are about standing witness to Soulful revelations and being the Light of Go(o)d for the other. We are partners and equals. This practice of allowance invites Grace shows up between us.

6. We finish with prayer once we’ve completed the sharing. This typically takes ten to twenty minutes and one of us prays for the other and then we shift. As soon as we say “Amen,” we hang up.

7. We decided that mailing throughout the week is okay for us. We don’t call each other and “chat” about things like girlfriends. Our relationship is driven by and exclusive to prayer.

The benefits of being a PP and having a PP are numerous. Scripture speaks of the two or more gathered together as a potency in which God’s Presence is revealed. Sitting on the phone, awake to the presence of Heaven as the location of our connection brings about all kinds of innate treasures. The best is I become more of me. This appears to be a small investment for such a grand return.