The Prayer PracticeSample

Day 4: Being with God

In relationships – with God or otherwise – you can gauge the level of intimacy in that relationship by how comfortable you are being alone together in silence. When applied to prayer, this level of wordless communion has come to be called “contemplation.”

There are three basic dimensions to contemplative prayer:

First, looking at God, looking at you, in love. The label “contemplative prayer” is based on language found in Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. The word can be translated “to gaze at.” Or “to direct the inner gaze of your heart at.” To contemplate God’s glory is to look at his beauty and goodness and love pouring out toward you.

Secondly, it’s yielding to his love. There is a type of prayer where you are laboring, not to change what is (petition and intercession), but to accept what is. Think of Jesus in Gethsemane. He ends by praying, “Not my will, but yours be done.” This yielding is at the heart of contemplative prayer.

Finally, it’s resting in God’s love. Contemplative prayer feels less like work and more like rest – more like a portable Sabbath. It’s less something we do, and more something God does in us.

Contemplative prayer is at the heart of spiritual formation –the process by which we are formed into people of love in Christ. Back to 2 Corinthians, Paul writes that as we “contemplate the Lord’s glory” we are “being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”

That word “transformed” is metamorphao in Greek, the word for how a caterpillar is transformed into a butterfly. It’s a word picture for the type of change that is possible in Christ. In Paul’s framework, the core of this change is contemplation, or looking at God himself.

But that’s not to say it’s easy. It’s hard! You will face three major challenges:

First, distraction. The moment you begin to sit in loving attention to God; without words, your brain will start to jump all over the place. That doesn’t mean you’re bad at prayer; it means you’re human! The key to quieting distractions is not to give them a second thought. Literally. When they come, just bring your mind back to God.

The second thing we have to face is our fear. As we begin to pray contemplatively, we become more and more aware of how we’ve been using distraction, hurry, noise, work, people, entertainment, food, shopping, and a thousand other cultural narcotics to run from our pain. In quiet prayer, we create space for it to come up in a healthy way; and for us to offer it to God to heal. But if you stay with contemplative prayer long enough, you will move through that inner turmoil to a kind of surrender, freedom, and inner peace.

Finally, you will have to face hurry. You will quickly realize that to pray contemplatively, you have to adopt a contemplative lifestyle. Put another way, to be with Jesus in this way, we have to slow down to a more prayerful pace.

One way of thinking about discipleship to Jesus in the modern era is about slowing your life down to pray. Historically, followers of Jesus have done this through cultivating a daily prayer rhythm. To pray all the time, we need to pray much of the time. To practice the presence of God all day long, we need to pause at intervals throughout the day, and come back to our home in God; and his home in us.

The end goal of a daily prayer rhythm is what Paul called “praying without ceasing.” To live, as Jesus did, saturated in the loving light of the trinitarian presence. Looking at God, looking at you in love, yielding to his love, and resting in his love. Can you imagine a more compelling, beautiful life? If you ache for that kind of life, start right where you are. Begin slowly, begin humbly, by being with God.