Episode 89: Pondering your Prayers, A Form of Meditation

Listen on Audible | Listen on Spotify | Listen on iTunes

 If you have been following me for long you would catch that I am a big advocate of pondering your prayers before you even begin to say them. I often talk a lot about the benefits of pondering your prayers but today I want to focus on how that can also achieve your goal of learning how to meditate. You might be thinking, Niki I don’t think I have a goal to meditate. Then let me tell you a little something about the power of meditation in your life. President David O. McKay was a big proponent of meditation.

“Meditation is the language of the soul. It is defined as a 'form of private devotion, or spiritual exercise, consisting in deep, continued reflection on some religious theme.' Meditation is a form of prayer.”

Let’s break that down. First, meditation is the language of the soul. Why does your soul need a language? Because your spirit needs to communicate with the still small voice of the Holy Ghost. That is how you can receive information from God and align your will with His. When you can gain information from the still small voice then you can feel motivation, energy, peace, rested, helped, confident, understood, and a love for life.

When you feel all of these types of emotions conveyed from God then you have a power behind you helping prioritize your to-do list, easily fall asleep at night when life is chaotic around you, have meaningful conversations with loved ones, and the mental and physical stamina to do all that you are asked to do. That is why you need to learn the language of your soul

Second, meditation is a form of prayer that is a spiritual exercise helping you have deep continued reflection. I also want to tell you, from a scientific standpoint, what benefits you receive from being in a deep contemplative state.

There have been a lot of studies on the benefits of meditation and entering into this deep contemplative divine self. You can have improved brain function, increase creativity, improve inner stimulation for deeper learning, a relaxed body and calm steady breathing and an ability to recognize an inner wisdom. Think about what you could accomplish in the day if your body were more relaxed and what problems you could solve if you had better brain function and deeper learning.

If you don’t learn to enter this deep contemplative state through meditation and prayer you will experience your emotional reactions from the natural man state. This state produces muscle tension, rapid shallow breathing, a ruthless inner critic, reduced brain function, reactivity, opinion overload, rumination, shallow thinking, overstimulation and confusion.

The natural man state will leave you saying to yourself,  “I’m not good enough, I’ll never figure this out, I have no motivation, I don’t have enough energy to do that, or there’s not enough time in the day to do everything."

You might also find yourself checking out and scrolling social media, snapping at your kids or spouse, emotionally eating, cluttering your mind with the thoughts of how someone else is better than you and so confused that you don't even how to get out of any of this. This emotional reactive natural man state can be easily exited through meditation and prayer. 

Why do I keep putting meditation and prayer together? They go together. In the guide to the scriptures under the word ponder it says pondering is “To meditate and think deeply, often upon the scriptures or other things of God. When combined with prayer, pondering the things of God may bring revelation and understanding.” You can see from this quote that pondering is a form of meditation and when combined with prayer it brings an even more powerful experience. This applies to more than just scriptures. It applies to our entire lives as we are daughters of God.

I have so many women I work with tell me that they don’t feel like they can include certain things in their prayers because God is only interested in the spiritual things of their life. To that I refer to amazing quote from Bishop Causse that disputes that thought. 

“​​My brothers and sisters, we should recognize that all is spiritual to the Lord—including the most temporal aspects of our lives.”

Meditating and praying about all temporal aspects of your lives is important. Using meditation to ponder your prayers before you even say them is the most effective way to access Christ’s enabling power of time, energy and help beyond anything you could ever imagine. Elder Renlund taught about this very thing.

“Reflecting on God’s goodness and mercy helps us become more spiritually receptive. I invite you to remember each day the greatness of Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ and what They have done for you. Let your consideration of Their goodness more firmly bind your wandering heart to Them. Ponder Their compassion, and you will be blessed with added spiritual sensitivity and become more Christlike.”

Pondering what you want to be grateful for in your prayers before you say them allows you to be more spiritually receptive. Do you want to be in a more spiritually receptive state when you’re praying? Think about how that would help you become a vessel for the Savior to use you to help others by knowing the exact answer for each situation. 

I also love that he says pondering, or in other words meditating, on the goodness of God will help you bind your wandering heart to Them and become more like Christ. Isn’t that the goal of each day, to be spending our time on what God wants us to be doing and to not get distracted with all the other things that we could be doing?

Think about how much time you would save in your day if you knew which items were most important to God in the eternal perspective. You would also have access to Christ’s ability to bring peace when those other things don’t get off your to-do list. 

You could also use Christ's power to focus and not wander off and drowning our emotions in mindless activities that get us no where. Instead you would choose carefully how you spend your time and energy in caring for yourself and others. That is the power God is offering you if you are willing to learn to meditate and ponder your prayers before you say them.

This is something that is very important to me and has blessed my life so I am putting together a meditation course that will help you do just that. It is called Clarity in the Chaos Course   With this course you will get Revelation Meditations for access to Christ’s enabling power of TIME, ENERGY and HELP.

These meditations are different from any type of meditation you have experienced. A lot of meditations try to clear your thoughts or just produce a relaxed state of mind. Not these. They are specifically designed for that connection time through prayer and will teach you how to use meditation to ponder your prayers before you say them using my Seeking Personal Revelation Journal. 

In the Clarity in the Chaos Course you will learn a variety of 20 different revelation meditations to connect to a power beyond your own that facilitates:

• Clarity in your thoughts to stop getting distracted and be guided in what’s most important so you can feel at peace with the things that  didn’t get checked off your list
• Receiving the Still small voice to be a vessel for the Savior and have confidence that you’re receiving exact answer to help in every situation
• Yoking to the Savior’s enabling power to increase your mental and physical stamina so you can get more done than you can do on your own

If you want to stop lying awake at night feeling like nothing got done but you are physically exhausted from doing so much feeling that you can’t face another day like that, or as though your load is too heavy to hold on your own. And instead you want to start hearing the still small voice that gives you the exact answer for their unique circumstances, then jump on the WAITLIST so you can be notified when these meditations release.