Christian Parenting - Praying the Examen

Prayer is so multi-faceted.  It is like a diamond with many sides.  Maybe teaching your children to pray the psalms isn't what your family needs currently, but maybe praying the examen is.  What is the Examen?  The Examen is a form of prayer that Ignatius of Loyola popularized in his Spiritual Exercises.  But its roots are much deeper than Ignatius.  It comes from the Scriptural words,

Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.  See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. --Psalms 139:23-24

When we pray the examen we are engaging in a prayer of reflection and listening as God sifts through our life.  God alone has the power to search our hearts and minds.  God alone knows the deep things inside a person.  He alone is aware of our true motivations and desires.  It is easy to think we can know these things, but the 'heart is deceitful above all things' (Jeremiah 17:9).


Because of this, we need to take time to reflect on our life and allow God to bring out the good, the bad and the ugly.  And we need to teach our children to do the same.  John Calvin wrote,

Man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God's face, and then descends from contemplating him to scrutinizing himself. --Institutes

Where worship focuses on God, the Examen opens space for God to focus on us and for our cooperation with his gaze.

There are two main ways to pray the Examen.  First, to ask God to reveal the depths of our hearts and our motivations as we walk through the day.  I have not found this particularly helpful as I am prone to paralysis when I constantly question every thought or action.  Furthermore, it leads me to be overly self-focused.  The very thing the disciplines are to help us avoid.  However, there are men and women who find this very helpful.

The second way that I find most helpful is to take a time at the end of each day, week or month and sit with my calendar and prayerfully reflect on the time, asking God to make me aware of his presence during the time period in reflection.  I may ask a series of questions, or just one of the following:

1. When have I felt touched by the presence of God? pulled away from God?
2. What events, relationships or thoughts drew me closer to God? discouraged me?
3. When did I feel the most free? dissatisfied and restricted?
4. What was the best part of this time? worst?
5. What was the most satisfying part of my life as it related to work/leisure/spirituality? were there times of shame, guilt or loneliness?

These questions and/or their negatives, when prayerfully considered, can be a powerful way of listening to the Spirit of God inside as that Spirit seeks to guide and lead us.  Maybe you want to look over your calendar, maybe you don't.  Generally if I am doing it over a week or month, I need the calendar, but if it is just for the day, I don't.  Either way, I rely on God to bring to mind those things which he wants me to remember and reflect on.  

There are two variations that are particularly useful with children.  The first is to ask your children where God was during an aspect of the day?  Ask them to pray and give them a few moments before you solicit a response from them.  This teaches and trains them to hear and listen for the voice of God.  Talk through their response.  Encourage them as the answer.  The other variation is one that Martin Luther employed.  He used the 10 commandments (Exodus 20:1-17) and asked God to bring to mind any actions which violated the commands or upheld them and then based upon this leading he confessed or praised God as appropriate.  This would be a great way to train our children to love God and love neighbor while also teaching them to pray and listen for the voice of God.

A third variation which I haven't seen in print but which makes alot of sense to me is to use Galatians 5:22-23, the fruit of the Spirit passage, and reflect on life in much the same way Luther's 10 commandments version.  This seeks to focus on positive effects of the Spirit within our lives and not the negative prohibitions.

These are but a few ideas related to praying the Examen in your life and the life of your family.  May God be glorified as you engage in these disciplines.