Relationship with God : journey from illusion to prayer
1/23/2014
Relationship with God
- journey from illusion to prayer
Meditation
-Psalm 119:9-16
9 How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to thy word.
10 With my whole heart I seek thee; let me not wander from thy commandments!
11 I have laid up thy word in my heart, that I might not sin against thee.
12 Blessed be thou, O Lord; teach me thy statutes!
13 With my lips I declare all the ordinances of thy mouth.
14 In the way of thy testimonies I delight as much as in all riches.
15 I will meditate on thy precepts, and fix my eyes on thy ways.
16 I will delight in thy statutes; I will not forget thy word.
11 hidden God's word in mind?
Illusion of immortality = idol
- Giving an eternal value to the things we own, the people we know, the plans we have, and the successes we "collect."
- Sentimentality : when we load our fellow human beings with immortal expectations, separation or the threat of it can release uncontrollable sentiments.
- Violence : when the hidden illusion of immortality becomes dominant in our intimate relationship, it does not take much to turn our desire to be loved into a lustful violence.
To reach a really nonviolent intimacy
- we have to unmask our illusion of immortality, fully accept death as our human destiny and reach out beyond the limits of our existence to our God out of whose intimacy we are born.
The importance of prayer
- All that has been said about solitude and hospitality points to someone higher than our thoughts can reach, someone deeper than our hearts can feel and wider than our arms can embrace, someone under whose wings we can find refuge(Ps90) and in whose love we can rest, someone we call our G
- Prayer as a loving intimacy with G is the ground I which solitude and hospitality are rooted.
- A spiritual life without prayer is like the gospel without Christ
How to pray
- "Make yourself a rule always to be with the Lord, keeping your mind in your heart and do not let your thoughts wander; as often as they stray, turn them back again and keep them at home in the closet of your heart and delight in converse with the Lord." - Theophan the Recluse(19C, Russia)
What prayer is…
- Gift: we have to learn how to pray while we can only receive it as a gift
- Breath: prayer is God's breathing in us, by which we become part of the intimacy of God's inner life, and by which we are born anew.
- Presence and absence: the mystery of God's presence can be touched only by a deep awareness of his absence; e.g. lovers
- A patient waiting
Challenges
- Absurdities of life: a crisis of war, sudden poverty, illness or death
- We are reminded of our illusions and asked to convert our protest into prayer
Three rules for prayer
- A contemplative reading of the word of God; "we should be willing to let them penetrate into the most hidden corners of our heart"
- A silent listening to the voice of G: need quiet time in the presence of G: slowly, very slowly, we discover that the silent time makes us quiet and deepens our awareness of ourselves and God
- A trusting obedience to a spiritual guide: our G is greater than our own heart and mind, and too easily we are tempted to make our heart's desires and our mind's speculations into the will of G. - (mentor system)
The prayer of heart
- The prayer of the heart requires first of all that we make G our only thought.
- When we have localized in the center of our inner being the empty space in which our G-filled mind can descend and vanish, and where the distinctions between thinking and feeling, knowing and……
Prayer and community
- Prayer is the language of the Christian community
- When prayer is no longer its primary concern, and when its many activities are no longer seen and experienced as part of prayer itself, the community quickly degenerates into a club with a common cause but no common vocation.
- Without community, individual prayer easily degenerates into eccentric and eccentric behavior, but without individual prayer, the prayer of the community quickly becomes a meaningless routine.
Discussion
- Did you notice the illusion of immortality inside of you? What kinds?
- What did you newly learn about prayer from the reading?
Labels:
Christian education,
God,
prayer,
relationship
