Supercharge Your Prayers

Three times a day we daven the Amida, also known as the Shemoneh Esrei. These prayers have profound meaning and immense power. However, over time, it’s all too easy to become accustomed to the words and our minds frequently go astray. How can we train ourselves to pray with real focus, devotion, and yearning? 

Ask Hashem to help you pray with joy, devotion, and intent. An excellent time to do this is just after you enter the synagogue before beginning the prayer session. Another key moment is immediately before the beginning the Amida when we ask Hashem to open our lips so that our mouths may say His praise. We should make the recitation of this line a huge special interest item and spend some time actually asking Hashem to help us concentrate! 

To set the stage for powerful prayer try expressing a couple additional thoughts that are especially meaningful to you. For example, we can remind ourselves that we are standing before the King upon whom we are totally dependent for every aspect of our lives and life itself. He is our loving Heavenly Father Who wants the very best for us. As taught by the Arizal, we should also make a firm commitment to love our neighbor as ourselves.  

Pause, Breathe Deeply, and Reflect 

A technique I have found helpful is to pause before each blessing, take a deep breath and contemplate how much you need what you are preparing to request and how wonderful it would be to have it fulfilled. Deep breathing before and after each blessing helps you to regroup and refocus on the meaning and significance of what you are about to say. It helps you remember that true desire is a prerequisite for an effective prayer request.  
 

A Second Chance 

What happens if you go through the entire nineteen blessings of the Amida, and then realize that you haven’t concentrated on a single one? Fortunately, we have a second chance during the morning and afternoon services, the repetition recited by the prayer leader. In his book, Gateway to Prayer, Rabbi Shimshon Pincus brings down from the Arizal that the repetition is even more important than the initial recital of the prayers!  

It’s vital to take advantage of this precious second chance. We should place a finger next to the words and contemplate the meaning of each phrase as the prayer leader repeats them. On Shabbat and holidays when we are not so intricately familiar with the words, it may help to look at the English side of the page to get a firmer understanding of the prayers’ meaning. We can then intensify our personal affirmation of the praises or the requests being made to our Heavenly Father. 

Strive for Progress not Perfection 

Don’t be discouraged if your prayers are far from ideal. Keep making a new beginning one prayer at a time throughout the Amidah. Strive for gradual and continuous improvement. The main thing is to keep prayer on your radar screen as a key daily goal. Monitor and evaluate yourself after each prayer session. 

Rabbi Elimelech Biederman told a story about a young man who was completely discouraged regarding his prayers because he had so many bad thoughts. He said he was going to give up and stop praying. Rabbi Biederman told him that that would be the worst thing he could do. We should remember that it’s the Evil Inclination who sends bad thoughts; that’s his job! Our job is to react properly when we receive these thoughts. Those bad thoughts are not the real you! Gently move on and concentrate one line at a time.  

The Chasam Sofer says that the power of tefilla is so great that if a person were to daven one single prayer with perfect concentration and purity of intent, that one prayer would have the power to gather all the tefillot that he may have cast away and davened without proper thought throughout the year and bring them in front of the heavenly throne! This teaching should be constantly on the forefront of our minds so that we’ll never be discouraged. 

Believe in the Power of Prayer 

Rabbi Biederman told a story about a teacher in a girl’s seminary who took her young son with her on the seminary’s trip to Tsfat. While they were in the prayer service, the little boy was extremely rowdy and wild. At one point during the service, he took his mother’s siddur and threw it over the mechitza (partition separating the women’s and men’s sections)  into the men’s section. The mother was quite distraught. At that point she could only get another prayer book and continue as best she could. 

After the services, she waited for the men to leave, hoping she would spot her prayer book and ask that it be returned to her. When she saw a young man carrying her prayer book, she approached him and requested that he return it. The young man smiled and said “I am a recent Baal Teshuva. I don’t know the prayers by heart yet. When I got to the services in the men’s section, I saw that the shelves were completely empty and did not contain any prayer books. I made an impassioned plea: Please Hashem, I need a prayer book to pray to You properly. Please send me one. Suddenly, a siddur flew out of thin air and landed on the table in front of me!” 

Rabbi Biederman says this gives us two lessons. First, when someone’s wild, he may be a messenger of Hashem! Secondly it shows the power of prayer. When you urgently and passionately request something that you truly need, Hashem will certainly respond. You can read more about that in Rabbi Arush’s book A New Light and my series If There’s a Will, There’s a Way, based on the book. 

In the merit of striving to improve the way we pray, may our prayers become more powerful and may Hashem grant our sincere requests.