Game With Minutes

Pray without ceasing.

1 Thessalonians 5:17 NASB

On January 30, 1930, Frank Laubach began a prayer experiment he called “the game with minutes.” He was dissatisfied with his lack of intimacy with God and decided to do something about it. One of the inspirations for Laubach’s experiment was Brother Lawrence, a seventeenth-century monk whose singular purpose in life was to live in the presence of God. For Brother Lawrence, this didn’t mean retreating from the routine of life; it meant redeeming every routine and turning it into a prayer. For decades, Brother Lawrence worked in the kitchen of his Carmelite Monastery, washing dishes and preparing meals, but he turned his chores into prayers. After many years of practicing the presence of God, prayer became a way of life. In the words of Brother Lawrence, “The time of business^a does not with me differ from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament.”

Inspired by the example set by Brother Lawrence, Laubach embarked on his prayer experiment. The driving motivation was a question that consumed every waking moment: Can we have contact with God all the time? His life became a quest to answer that question. Like an explorer embarking on a voyage of discovery, Laubach set sail on his prayer experiment. He chose to make the rest of his life an experiment in answering that question.

Laubach described “the game with minutes” in these terms:

One of the ways that Laubach played this game was shooting people with silent prayer. He didn’t cock his thumb, use his index finger to fire, and then blow away the imaginary smoke; he simply prayed for people while looking at them. Some people would walk by without any reaction, but others would do a sudden about-face and smile at him. Sometimes a person’s entire demeanor would change. The simple act of praying for everybody he encountered turned the routine of life into a daily adventure.

I discourage using an actual shooting motion, but what a great way to pull the trigger on 1 Timothy 2:1: “I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people.” Putting this passage into practice is as simple as praying for people before or after meeting with them. Before walking into a meeting, pray for the people you are meeting with. Ask God for favor, discernment, and grace. Then when you leave, pray a blessing on them. A prayer of blessing isn’t just something for pastors to pronounce over congregations at the end of services. If you are a child of God, you are a priest. It’s your right and responsibility to pronounce blessings over everyone in your life — from your children to your colleagues to your customers, and everyone in between.

Prayer Routines

The key to praying without ceasing is turning everything into a prayer. It usually starts with the big things like problems and dreams. Then it graduates to little things like chores and routines. And eventually, your entire life becomes a continuous prayer.

Every thought. Every action. Every moment.

If you are a worrier by nature, I have good news for you. You have tremendous prayer potential. The apostle Paul writes, “Don’t worry about anything;^c instead, pray about everything.” If you worry about everything, you’ll have a much higher likelihood of praying without ceasing if you simply learn to turn your worries into prayers. The Holy Spirit can redeem your anxious thoughts by using them as prayer triggers. Think of worry as a prayer alarm. Every time it goes off, you put it to prayer. And when you do, you’ll discover that your anxieties will evaporate like early morning fog. So quit wasting your worries. Redeem them by recycling them. Turn your worries into prayers!

What if you stopped reading the newspaper and started praying it? What if you turned lunch meetings into prayer meetings? What if you turned your chores into prayers?

You’d come a lot closer to the goal of praying without ceasing!

When you are folding your children’s laundry, pray that they would be clothed with the righteousness of Christ. When you’re commuting to and from work, cast your cares on Him. When you tuck your kids into bed at night, let the last words they hear be your prayers for them.

One of my newest and most meaningful prayer routines is kneeling by my bed at the beginning of every day. It’s the first thing I do. I climb out of bed and get on my knees. I want God to have my first thoughts, my first words.

It dials me into God’s frequency. It sets the tone. It postures me for the entire day.

Holy Experiment

Six months into his game with minutes, Laubach wrote about his holy experiment in his prayer journal.

The reason most people don’t feel intimacy with God is that they don’t have a daily prayer rhythm. They may have a weekly rhythm of going to church, which is wonderful, but doing so in and of itself won’t produce intimacy with God. Can you imagine talking with your spouse or child once a week? God wants a day-by-day, hour-by-hour, minute-by-minute relationship with you.

The good news is this: God is only a prayer away. The shortest distance between you and God is the distance between your knees and the floor. But you don’t have to hit your knees or bow your head or fold your hands to be heard. Prayer isn’t something we do with our eyes closed; prayer is something we do with our eyes wide open. Prayer isn’t a sentence that begins with “Dear Jesus” and ends with “Amen.” In fact, the best prayers don’t even involve words at all. The best prayer is a well-lived life, day in and day out.

Turn your prayer life into a game. Try experimenting with a new posture like walking or kneeling. Try experimenting with different types of fasts — from food to television to sleep to Facebook — but remember that the key is giving something up and replacing it with prayer. Try praying at different times, like first thing in the morning or last thing at night. Try experimenting with different techniques. Create a prayer list or begin journaling your prayers.

If you want God to do something new in your life, you cannot keep doing the same old thing. My advice is simple: do something different. And you’ll see what a difference it makes!

Change of pace + Change of place = Change of perspective