Deepening our prayer life...

 
          At its most basic level prayer is a conscious relationship with God; a relationship that affects us.  Conscious: awake, alert, aware, knowing.  Relationship: interaction, connection, association, involvement.  Prayer moves us, stills us, comforts us, disturbs us, affirms us, convicts us, changes us; above all, prayer deepens our faith and strengthens our relationship with God and with one another.  A conscious relationship with God, prayer, sculpts us more and more into the person God created us to become.

          Why do we pray?  We pray for various reasons:  obligation, to placate/please God, to get something.  We “use” prayer for various purposes.  Another answer to the question is that we pray because we were created in the image of God (imago dei), male and female, in the image of God he made us.  The Creator imaged us, made us in love for love:  to be loved and to love.  In the depths of our hearts and at the core of our souls we long for, desire a relationship with, the One, the LOVE, who created us.  Prayer comes from our longing for God AND from God’s longing for us.  Often we feel stirrings, nudges, restlessness.  This is God calling us to prayer.  We were made for a relationship with God.  Augustine wrote in his Confessions, “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts find no peace until they rest in you.”  Julian of Norwich speaks similarly, “..for our natural wish is to have God, and God’s good wish is to have us, and we can never stop wanting or longing until we fully and joyfully possess him, and then we shall wish for nothing more” (from Revelations of Divine Love). 

          While we yearn for closeness, for intimacy with the One who Loves us, intimacy brings with it vulnerability, fear and resistance.  A deep prayer life eventually leads us into the vulnerable place of being fully known; of telling God all; totally and completely being ourselves with God.  No wonder the Old Testament tells us that no one ever wanted to see the face of God or stand face to face with God!  For face to face with God we cannot hide anything.  Face to face equals truth.  God’s love equals grace.  If you have obstacles or resistances to going deeper in prayer remember the most frequently occurring words of encouragement in the Bible are “do not fear”.  And another often spoken, “Trust in the Lord”.  Let go of judging yourself.  God will not judge;  God will love you with gentleness and compassion.  God wants to share himself with you and for you to share yourself with God.  There is no judgment; just sharing. 

          In William Barry’s Here’s My Heart; Here’s My Hand-Living Fully in Friendship with God he writes, “In principle, prayer is a simple thing.  I tell God what is going on in my life and in my heart and wait for God’s response.”  (Look to the psalmists’ prayers in 42, 51, 13, even the anger of 137).  God responds. 

          Prayer affects us.  True prayer, such an intimate relationship with God, changes us.  Spending time with God we come to love what God loves; to desire what God desires; we become more like God.  God was pleased to dwell in Jesus and it is through our growing knowledge and deepening love of Jesus, love for grace and truth, that we grow closer and closer to God.  God desires and is pleased to dwell in us too and God will come, if we desire it and allow it to be so.   Prayer is a conscious relationship with God that affects us. A relationship requires some form of communication.  How does God communicate with us?  We’ll take that up next month. 

 Glad to be sharing the journey.                    Peace, Carol