Prayer
Finding the Heart’s True Home
by Richard Foster
Part 2— Moving Upward
Chapter 14—Contemplative
Prayer
“ O my divine Master, teach me this mute language
which says so many things.”
OPENING PRAYER
1. Immersion into the Silence of God
“We have become like old
shoes—all worn out except for the tongue.”
Clement of Alexandria
We
communicate more but say less than previous generations.
Contemplative
Prayer can free us from our addiction to words.
Progress
in intimacy with God means progress toward silence
More
of Him
Less
of me
In
our silent attention to God, He is able to do His deepest work in us.
2. Not for the Novice
Milk
is for babies—steak does them no good. This prayer is steak.
Even
C.S. Lewis found contemplative prayer to be too much at first.
It is
for those who have built some spiritual muscle.
Signs
of maturing faith (progress toward it, not ultimate achievement):
Continuing
hunger for intimacy with God
Ability
to forgive others are great personal cost
Realistic
assessment of personal abilities and shortcomings
Freedom
from boasting about spiritual achievements
Ability
to live out demands of life with patience and wisdom
Less
afraid of being known and owned by God (less hiding/covering)
Able
to receive constructive criticism graciously
Reading
the text of the universe in the original language
Not
all spiritual guidance is from God
We
are told to test the spirits to see if they are from God (I John 4:1).
Do
not be fearful, but be knowledgable
Prayer
of protection before beginning:
“Shield
us, Lord, with thy right arm. Save us from sin’s dreadful harm.” (Martin Luther)
“Christ
as a light, Christ as a shield, Christ beside me on my left and my right.” St.
Patrick
Feel
free to pray your own prayer.
3. A Loving Attentiveness to God
Dreaming
of heaven, the gaze of God, the prayer of reality.
We
attend to Him who loves us, is near to us, draws us to Himself.
Concrete
examples fail us, so we use affective language to describe it.
An
experience of the heart more than the head.
This goes against our training to stay
in our heads, that emotion is not to be trusted.
Witnesses
to contemplative prayer and vast and reputable, and speak of something far deeper than mere
emotion.
Our
emotions can be disciplined and sanctified by God in the same way that reason and imagination are.
“Incline
your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live.” Isaiah 55:3
Over
time we learn to distinguish the voice of Christ from all others.
4. Union with God
The goal of contemplative prayer
is union with God—the ultimate stage of Christian experience.
We
cannot arrive at union with God by our own efforts (meditation, worship, devotion,
sacrifice). It takes an act of God.
As in
all commandments in the Bible, the commandment to “abide in me” is understood to mean
“make yourself available to the Holy Spirit so that He can cause you to abide in me.” We know that without Him we can do nothing.
Union
with God brings us to full personhood—sanctifies our individual identity in Christ.
5. The Love of God
“The
message of hope the contemplative offers you is not that you need to find your way through the jungle of
language and problems that today surround God; but
that…God loves you, if present in you, lives in you, dwells in you, calls you, saves you, and offers
you an understanding and light which are like nothings
you ever found in books or heard in sermons.”
Thomas Merton
Contemplation
is “love on fire with devotion” (Walter Hilton)
6. Purity of Heart
Love
leads us to purity of heart. We want to be like the Beloved.
Ps.
24:3-4
The
pure and impure can never be united, so God sends the “fire” of contemplative to consume all that is impure
in us. Sanctification.
Purity
of heart is to will one thing. We give
up all other things to be one with God.
Jesus
only did, spoke, and saw only what the Father did, spoke and saw.
7. Step 1:
Recollection
Recollection—re-collecting
our scattered selves into one place.
Centering
Prayer, Prayer of Presence
Sit
comfortably and begin to let go of all distractions.
Become
aware of God’s presence in the room.
Don’t
seek to suppress turmoil—just notice it and let is pass on by.
Self-abandonment
to the presence of God.
Write
them down, envision them flowing by in a river, flying away, melting like snow.
Use
a sacred word to return to quiet as you let the distractions go.
This
is not easy and takes practice. Offer
this time as a love offering to God. It
is not wasted time.
We
become aware of how self-referential our hearts really are, and seek to give ourselves more fully to
God.
8. Step 2:
The Prayer of Quiet
Once
we have reached our “center”, we find ourselves in the throne room of God.
More
profound than silence or a lack of words—a listening stillness.
Inward
steady gaze of the heart—beholding the Lord.
We sense His nearness.
As we
wait on Him, we are given a teachable spirit.
Eventually
we will grow in having an inner attentiveness to God all the time.
We
will not hear God speak but rather discover later that transformation was happening in the silence.
9. Step 3: Spiritual Ecstasy
Most
of us have not experienced this. Very
few do.
2
Cor. 12:1-5—Paul and the 3rd Heaven
St.
Augustine’s story
Teresa
of Avila and John of the Cross floating above ground
Contemplative
Prayer to the nth degree.
A
fleeting experience—not the norm.
Do
not be disheartened—this is an act of God, not something you can control or make happen. Our attempts
at listening prayer are fraught with the “real life” that is all around and within us. But God welcomes our attempts, full of grace and mercy.
Contemplative
Prayer may one day be the only thing we are capable of as our bodies fail—to pray without words and
bask in His presence.
Closing
Prayer
My Lord and my God, listening is hard for me. I do not exactly mean hard, for I understand
that this is a matter of receiving rather that trying. What I mean is that I am so action oriented,
so product-driven, that doing is
easier for me than being.
I need your help if I am to be still and
listen. I would like to try. I would like to learn how to sink down into
the light of your presence until I can become comfortable in that posture. Help me try now.
Thank you.
–Amen.
You can share our lessons with others who can’t be
here in person by referring them to
http://christian-transformationblog.blogspot.com
“Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late
have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that
I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which
you created. You were with me, but I was not with you.”
St. Augustine
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