Being a sniper in prayer

The steps to fire a sniper rifle involve first choosing high-grade, match-grade ammunition with consistent powder charges, bullet weight, and jacket concentricity to ensure uniform ballistic performance, mounting the scope using high-quality rings and bases to ensure zero movement under recoil, zeroing by ajust windage and elevation turrets to align the point of impact with the point of aim, obtaining a Natural Point of Aim (NPA) by adjusting your body and rifle until the reticle naturally rests on the target without muscle tension, centering the reticle on the target, ensuring no parallax error by having the reticle remain on target as you move your head slightly, using a a ballistic calculator or reference DOPE (Data on Previous Engagements) for elevation and windage corrections based on distance, wind speed, humidity, and temperature. Allow the barrel to cool between shots during prolonged sessions to prevent thermal drift, which can affect accuracy, blablabla

From the above text, it becomes clear that being a sniper is clearly more complicated than being just a good shot.

Now, imagine 3 soldiers. They all receive a sniper rifle with a 50 bullet clip and instructions to kill as many enemies as possible. The first comes and says he killed 10 enemies with the entire clip The second says he killed 3 enemies with the entire clip. The third says he killed no enemies despite having used an entire clip. The general would most likely give the first a medal and a third the removal of his rifle as he is clearly just wasting ammo.

Now, imagine someone who wants to kill himself. Would he shoot himself at random until he is dead? No: he would carefully choose the most damaging place to ensure it will be a one shot only: that he will not miss and end up still alive and in a hospital, worse than before. That does not require all those complicated sniper techniques. So, if we are so careful to do something so awful, why are so careless in prayer? What's the relationship you are thinking now, so let me explain.

We should understand first that the prayers we usually do such as hail mary, our father, etc are like bullets. Those prayers do really hurt demons, and are indeed always used in exorcisms. But we think exorcisms are things of the past, stuff from hollywood, fantasies created by religious fanatics. We fail to understand that, regardless of whether those rites indeed exist, the evil they are designed to combat is very real and active. And the way we combat that evil is through those "bullets": prayers.

Jesus however said "Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth". And he also said "And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words". And he mentioned the old testament when it says "These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me"

In other words, our father in heaven looks for snipers, not people with zero aiming skills shooting Hail Marys aimlessly hoping that at least one bullet will hit. For that is what makes us "combat effective": being able to inflict the most damage on the enemies of our father and us. For it could even be that, through aimless shooting, we end up doing more damage than not. And, like the general in the analogy above, we are removed of our rifle.

So how do we do that? How do we learn to become prayer snipers? Jesus says that we must pray in "Spirit and in truth". That sounds as cryptic as the sniper instructions of the beginning of this article. But how do snipers become snipers? They just go to sniper school. We should do the same: ask the Holy Ghost to instruct us in what that spirit and truth thing means and how we can implement it.

A rosary for example is a clip of 50 hail marys bullets: if we focus on trying to empty it (aka, finish the prayer) as quick as possible instead of trying to use them to help our father in heaven in his battle (and our battle too) against all the evil that hates us and is unrelentlessly trying to harm us we are already in sniper school.

Until then, let's at least try to use our limited sniper skills by trying to focus on the words of our prayers instead of trying to empty entire clips of Hail Marys. A sniper does not shoot aimlessly: he pauses between shots (the "allow the barrel to cool to prevent thermal drift" instruction above), thinks on a target, pressed the trigger slowly, etc. Same here: we should pray by uttering slow, thoughtful words with plenty of pauses to digest them instead of babling away like a race horse caller.