For followers of Christ, prayer is simply communication between our spirits and the Spirit of God from whom we draw life.

Bruce identified three of many reasons to pray. This week I would like to simply name those reasons and write a prayer for each one. Please do the same for yourself in a journal, or with music, images, or silently in the landscape of your mind. 

First, Bruce described how our facades drop when we pray because we are allowing God to penetrate our spirits. The darkest recesses of our souls are exposed in the light of infinite love. The constricted spaces where we have eked out a spiritual living, now free of the clutter of facades, can expand into a vast and thriving communion with our Creator.

Holy Father, Son and Spirit, Forgive us for the elaborate facades that we have built in fear and confusion and rebellion. Teach us a better way! We invite you to dismantle our pretenses and in their place smooth out panoramic vistas where light and truth and peace flourish. We long for our facades to disintegrate like papermaché soaked in the drenching rain of You.

Second, Bruce described how in praying, we invite God into our actual situations. When we lay before the Divine our marriages, jobs, health or other circumstances, we have ushered in the God of the Universe and given him the best seat in the house.

Holy Father, Son and Spirit, Forgive us for relegating you to the margins of our lives, for reducing you to a benign observer who watches from a distance. Right now, we invite you into these specific circumstances: ____________. We long for clarity, wisdom, and transformation in these areas. Thank you that when we pray, our thoughts and actions start to gain traction, the pettiness of our lives sloughs off, and by some mysterious alchemy, more gets done than if we had used that prayer time to tackle our to-do list. Teach us to make you the God of the center of our lives.

Third, Bruce said that to pray is to end our self-reliance. We are beings created for relationship with our Creator, and when we rely on ourselves, we wilt and shrink; we choose less. Jesus himself prayed that we would become “one with the Father.” He also said that “apart from me, you can do nothing.” (John 15:5)*

Holy Father, Son and Spirit, Thank you for giving us spirits which have in them the instinct to pray, the primordial impulse to contact your great Spirit. Teach us not to suppress this intuition, but to agree with it wholly and allow it to carry us into your presence. In your Love-light, our self-reliance dies and we feel your delight in us. You have said that if we delight in you, you will give us the desires of our hearts. Father, our hearts desire prayer! Teach us to live lives of constant, trusting prayer. 

In Jesus’ name, Amen.

As well as encouraging you to form your own prayers based on the above concepts, I also encourage you to read the scripture from Isaiah 30:15-19* and then write a prayer in response to it.

###
 
*Note: If you wish, you can look up this and other Bible passages online at biblegateway.com 


Copyright © 2009 Warehouse 242