"Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.” Lk. 5:16
The word prayer means “to meet.” Just as Jesus needed to meet often with the Father one on one without distractions, so do we. He demonstrated that prayer is a uniting, communicative meeting, involving the exchanging of ideas, opinions, thoughts and feelings. “Ministry to God must come before ministry to people. The role of the priest is to minister first to God, then to people. The way we minister to God is by praising, worshiping and communing with Him in prayer and meditation. The way that we minister to the people is allowing the overflow of what we have received in our time alone with Him to pour out into the lives of others.” (Alves 1998, 24) This kind of prayer communion is part of the oneness Jesus wants us to have with God as seen in John 17:20-21: “Just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us.” Communion does not have to end when we go back into the world. Like Jesus, we can remain available, sensitive, and obedient 24-7—coram Deo! If we want to live coram Deo, there really is no way around routinely entering into this kind of contemplative prayer. It would be like trying to be married without ever being with and talking to each other.
Contemplative prayer can be defined as moving from information to intimacy. For instance when we meditate on a short Bible text, we need to then let it bring us into the Presence of the Word who authored it. Contemplative prayer is about finding that place before His face where we are centered in the Father’s love and then staying there. Some have called this “soaking in the Spirit.” Henry Nouwen defined this kind of prayer by saying, “It is precisely where we are most alone, most unique, most ourselves, that God is closest to us…the real work of prayer is to become silent and listen to the voice that says good things about me…to discover there the small intimate voice saying: ‘You are my Beloved Child.’” During contemplative prayer, it’s essential that we know we are free from expending energy trying to earn His love. When we make this connection, everything requires less of our energy and releases more of His. While resting in Him enables us to do more and more for Him, let’s remember, “Failure to recognize the value of merely being with God, as the beloved, without doing anything, is to gouge the heart out of Christianity.” (Piorek 2005)
Adapted from the Coram Deo Secret
http://www.marisarickerson.com/coram-deo.html
The word prayer means “to meet.” Just as Jesus needed to meet often with the Father one on one without distractions, so do we. He demonstrated that prayer is a uniting, communicative meeting, involving the exchanging of ideas, opinions, thoughts and feelings. “Ministry to God must come before ministry to people. The role of the priest is to minister first to God, then to people. The way we minister to God is by praising, worshiping and communing with Him in prayer and meditation. The way that we minister to the people is allowing the overflow of what we have received in our time alone with Him to pour out into the lives of others.” (Alves 1998, 24) This kind of prayer communion is part of the oneness Jesus wants us to have with God as seen in John 17:20-21: “Just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us.” Communion does not have to end when we go back into the world. Like Jesus, we can remain available, sensitive, and obedient 24-7—coram Deo! If we want to live coram Deo, there really is no way around routinely entering into this kind of contemplative prayer. It would be like trying to be married without ever being with and talking to each other.
Contemplative prayer can be defined as moving from information to intimacy. For instance when we meditate on a short Bible text, we need to then let it bring us into the Presence of the Word who authored it. Contemplative prayer is about finding that place before His face where we are centered in the Father’s love and then staying there. Some have called this “soaking in the Spirit.” Henry Nouwen defined this kind of prayer by saying, “It is precisely where we are most alone, most unique, most ourselves, that God is closest to us…the real work of prayer is to become silent and listen to the voice that says good things about me…to discover there the small intimate voice saying: ‘You are my Beloved Child.’” During contemplative prayer, it’s essential that we know we are free from expending energy trying to earn His love. When we make this connection, everything requires less of our energy and releases more of His. While resting in Him enables us to do more and more for Him, let’s remember, “Failure to recognize the value of merely being with God, as the beloved, without doing anything, is to gouge the heart out of Christianity.” (Piorek 2005)
Adapted from the Coram Deo Secret
http://www.marisarickerson.com/coram-deo.html
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