God is praying you into a life of prayer

Prayer—conscious, intentional, and in the words of St Paul, “unceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5.12)—is the highest expression of our intellectual, physical, and spiritual life. Prayer, when we are awake to it, is life.

When you consciously and intentionally enter into the prayer that is always going on around and within you, you become spiritually active. You are free and more fully aware of being alive to more than your “self-made me” and its many compulsions, anxieties, and obsessions.

This “lesser you” will only keep you curved in upon yourself, fallen into the sin that separates you and contracts you and closes you off from the presence of the Beloved, who is always near and whose prayer is always calling you to the friendship with God that is prayer.

Prayer can be as natural as breathing

Prayer can be and should be as natural as breathing—for we were made to pray just as we were made to breathe. The Bible tells us that in the beginning, God gently lifted the formless clay of the earth, cherished it lovingly, then kissed it and breathed life into it (Genesis 2.7). Prayer then is the experience of this tender intimacy, this reunion with the One who made us and loves us and who sustains us still by the Divine Breath.

Whether we know it or not, we exist by prayer just as we exist by breathing—God’s prayer for us and the prayer of our heart, which is always praying within us with each and every breath, each and every beating of our heart. Whether we’re mindful or not of this praying doesn’t matter.

Prayer is.

And without prayer—the sacred relationship shared by Creator and creation—things simply would not be.

Prayer is the yearning of life within us

At all times in history and in all places, people have sought the Divine and uttered some kind of prayer. Prayer is the yearning of life within us. It is life’s own desire for itself—for the source, the unending fountain of life. Prayer not only is a yearning, it is a finding.

In prayer we come home to God, we dwell with and in the One who is life (John 1.4 and 17.20-21).

Too many are bullied away from real prayer

The Shadow of the Reformation :: A Short Series on Why Protestants Have Trouble With Prayer

Part Nine (Conclusion)

Of course, there are plenty of Protestant Christians who have experienced some taste of the Divine and who have found ways into stillness before God. But the shadowy legacy of the Protestant Reformation and its interaction with the Enlightenment meant that the way to God became a matter of ideas and words and activism. Prayer became something the believer did on behalf of others or as a rational and verbal expression of devotion.

Gone was the mystery and awe, the intimacy and simplicity of the prayer of the heart—a wordless, contemplative, loving encounter with the Beloved—which had characterized Christianity for most of its history.

Astonishingly, the same Reformation whose ideas fostered democratic reforms throughout Europe, making the political process accessible to all people, more often than not had the opposite effect spiritually: the ordinary believer often felt she didn’t know enough to pray, or was intimidated to open his mouth because he wasn’t sure he had the right words.

But we are moving today toward a recovery of prayer.

When mystery gives way to certitude, the pursuit of God becomes a head-trip

The Shadow of the Reformation :: A Short Series on Why Protestants Have Trouble With Prayer

Part Eight

As it aged, Protestantism lost the sense of mystery that was common to Christianity during most of the first fifteen hundred years of Christian history, a mystery that was still cherished among early Reformers like Martin Luther and John Calvin. The mystery of God was reduced to thoughts we can think, ideas we can debate, and words we can speak or write or even pray.

The need for theological precision and intellectual rigor required of Christianity a rationalism that was foreign to its experience, especially as Christians were forced to debate not only with Christians of new sects and denominations, but also as they were forced to meet the challenges of the Enlightenment, the Age of Reason.

Mystery gave way to certitude. The pursuit of God became largely a head-trip, and prayer now required right thinking, where before all it required was love.

Prayer was relegated to religious services where experts crafted artful sermon-prayers spoken to God on behalf of others who merely listened. Among some Christians the devotional life became a highly rational form of prayer urged upon believers who were to practice “quiet times” so filled with Bible study and intercessory prayer for others that they were rarely "quiet times" at all.

To be continued . . .