Pray Like a Pirate: The Lord Will Answer

“Maybe you ought to pray like a pirate over this one.” My spiritual director suggested this to me some years ago as I shared with her an extremely frustrating situation I was facing. It had been affecting my prayer, my work and even my sleep patterns. “Pray like a pirate?” I asked. “Sure, you know how pirates in the movies say, ‘Arrrr?’ That’s actually an acronym for a very brief, but powerful way to pray to Jesus about what’s on your mind.” It surely is brief, and powerful, and something anyone can benefit from.

How to Pray Like a Pirate

The acronym, ARRRR is a handy reminder for a handful of simple, yet very effective steps for taking an issue to prayer with Jesus. The elements of the “pirate’s prayer” include:

• Acknowledging the movement of your heart–how you felt or feel about whatever happened or is going on at the time.
• Relating what’s going on to the Lord–telling him about it and how you felt–share your feelings.
• Receiving insight from the Lord–after relating, then in silence, we listen to receive light from the Lord. Why has He permitted this to happen, for instance?
• Responding–it’s only proper, after talking to the Lord about what’s on our mind and receiving His response, that we then respond in turn. This means responding to Him with praise and gratitude. It also means that we respond to others involved in the matter appropriately, with charity.
• Rejecting–we need to reject, rebuke and renounce any enemy spirits who are attempting to get us worked up, agitate us, and incite uncharitable thoughts and behaviors in us.

This simple approach will allow you to take anything you have on your heart or on your mind to the Lord in prayer. Consider the following example.

Acknowledge

So, are you having a difficult time with your boss, perhaps? Take it to the Lord–pray like a pirate, beginning with an acknowledgment of what’s going on. What specifically has happened or is happening?

My boss has been rude.  It began when he reprimanded me in public for a mistake he thought I made. I asked him if we could talk privately but he brushed me off. Since then, he has either ignored me or made rude comments about my work. Yet my work is as good as it’s ever been. I’m angry and frustrated. His treatment is abusive. I do a good job, and I expect to be recognized for it, not insulted. Who does he think he is, anyway?

Here’s another example where you can pray like a pirate: Perhaps you’ve left for an important meeting with just enough time to get there before it starts. However, with road construction and accidents, you’re stuck in traffic, watching the time tick away as you continue the countdown and estimate an ever later time of arrival. This presents another opportunity to pray like a pirate. Acknowledge the anxiety you feel, the helplessness in not being able to get out of the highway “parking lot” and avoid being immensely late for the meeting.

From acknowledging, you move to relate all of this to Jesus.

Relate

Now, take it to the Lord. Tell Jesus what you’ve just been thinking and feeling. Go to Him, talk to Him, tell Him all about it. Relate your hurts, your worries, your fears to Him. Takedown the defensive barriers and just share with Him how you feel. Talk to Him like the best friend that He is. Be open in your insecurity, your feelings of agitation, or inadequacy. Lay it all out there, from the bottom of your heart to His Sacred Heart. Fr. Boniface Hicks, OSB, and Fr. Thomas Acklin, OSB tell us in Personal Prayer that we need to go to Jesus just as we are. We must open up our hearts to Him in our poverty, inadequacy, and vulnerability. It is here, in this vulnerability, dropping our facade, that we meet God in prayer. This step–relating–when you pray like a pirate allows you to do just that.

Receive

Now, it’s time to quietly wait on the Lord. Let Him speak to you. Any good relationship requires two-way communication. Relationships don’t survive, much less thrive, when communication consists of a monologue. This is true of our relationships with our spouses, friends and coworkers. It also applies to our relationship with Our Lord and Savior. All relational prayer, and when we pray like a pirate, we are engaged in relational prayer, requires us to be silent. We must listen for the movements of our heart, for the light of the Lord as He responds to us. Unless we engage in silence, how can we ever expect to hear Him address us? As it is, some of us find that the “still, small voice” takes some straining to hear even when we try to be recollected in His presence.

Will you actually hear an audible voice? In most cases, probably not, but you often will “hear” a message from Him in your heart that you recognize in a thought. For example, I recall one such prayer time where I decided to pray like a pirate. Acknowledgment of some struggles I faced led me to relate it all to Jesus–to pray like a pirate. I asked Him why His pruning of me, in the context of the pruning of the branches on the vine, (cf. Jn 15:1-2), was so painful, so difficult. Almost immediately, the response came back: “You make it so.” Serious food for thought!

At other times, when we go to Him with our burdens, our anxieties, frustrations, fears, and challenges, we may not get any direct sense of a specific response. But at the end of our time in prayer, we’ll feel a load being lifted off our backs. His yoke is easy and His burden is light–he invites us to come as we are, with our burdens, to Him. (cf. Mt 11:28-30) He means what He says.

Respond

At the end of our time in listening for His light–for His word to us–it’s our turn to respond to Him. At the very least, a response of, “Thank You, Lord, for this time with You” is appropriate. As well, “Thank You for pointing this out to me” may well up from your heart. Based on what He shows you, you’ll probably have something more to tell Him as well. Consider the example, above, with the problem boss. Let’s say that the Lord reminds You of your recent prayers for grace to grow in certain virtues, such as patience and humility. He may or may not need to point out directly that this presents an opportunity to grow in both of these virtues. You may even conclude as much in prayerful reflection based on His work in your heart.

Or, how about being stuck in traffic and late for the meeting? What if He allows you to see that you need to unclutter your life, reset priorities, or…? In the case where I complained about the pruning feeling painful and His reminding me that I made it so, I had to acknowledge the truth. Even though what was going on was actually was an answer to my prayers for graces, I was fighting it. My reaction was similar to a child not wanting to take his medicine when mom or dad tried to administer it, even though it would help heal him up and make him stronger.

Thus, beyond voicing our gratitude, we may need to respond with some resolution for change. What specific, practical change might you implement, based on Our Lord’s response to you in your particular situation?

Reject

The enemy of our souls is a keen observer of human behavior. Enemy spirits will take every advantage to pull one over on us and take us away from Our Lord. As St. Ignatius of Loyola tells us in his 14th rule, the enemy looks for our weaknesses as entry points for attacking us. The demons know our weaknesses and will exploit them if we let them. Thus, as part of our routine spiritual warfare, we need to be sensitive to the movements of our hearts that come, not from God, but from the enemy. These movements take us away from God, from the charity, from love for others. Agitation, frustration, nervous energy, wrath, and the like, are NOT from God. They are from the enemy. Such enemy spirits include frustration, resentment, or unforgiveness, for example. This is why it is good to carry out this last, recommended step when we pray like a pirate. Besides receiving God’s truth and love, we often need to reject, rebuke, and renounce those spirits that have been taking our eyes off of Jesus.  

Consider the case of the problem boss, for example:

In the name of Jesus, I reject, rebuke and renounce the spirit of anger, the spirit of frustration, the spirit of resentment, the spirit of unforgiveness, the spirit of feeling demeaned, the spirit of feeling insulted, the spirit of pride, the spirit, of vanity…and in the name of Jesus, I take authority over these spirits I’ve rejected, rebuked and renounced, and I command them to go away and leave me alone now. 

Finish up your brief prayer time in a strong offensive mode; let God’s healing love strengthen you and fill you so you can bring His love to everyone you meet.

Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am. (Isaiah 58:9)