On the brink of entering the Promised Land after forty years of wandering, God commanded Joshua and the twelve tribes of Israel to collect stones from the Jordan River and to stack them as a reminder for future generations of where they had been and of God’s constant and present provision. I’d like to believe looking back at those old markers kept the Israelites grounded, reminded them of what was true when they were faltering in sin, and renewed a passion for the One in which they were made to honor.
Prayer as a historical marker.
As I’ve wrestled over my personal prayer life and what it means to pray, I’ve found myself looking back to historical markers left behind by saints gone by to find answers. It’s easy to neglect the past and consider it irrelevant, but as I dig deeper into our historical Christian heritage I begin to wonder if we’ve perhaps gotten a little lost along our way; forgotten the relevance of where we’ve been.
I wonder what prayer might have looked like for our early brothers and sisters; for those more nearly influenced by the disciples and apostles? I’m curious as to the inner workings of prayer and how it’s developed over the centuries. As I began to wander through various books, I came across a fellow Russian pilgrim in the 19th century who inquired of God what it might mean to pray without ceasing. Then that path took me toward the desert among 4th & 5th-century spiritual leaders who sought silence and solitude in order to learn how to pray.
These were souls, fellow pilgrims, who had a love for God, a desire to draw near to Him, a passion to follow his commands and a longing for deep, meaningful communion with their Creator and Lord.
By reading about the spiritual disciplines of prayer, silence and solitude I’ve been convicted to join this cloud of witnesses in order to commune more deeply with God, to understand His will (not mine), to serve out of the overflow of his divine Spirit living in me and to have an awareness of our connectedness with God and others in our daily life all through prayer without ceasing.
Will you join me on this path of discovering prayer?
Sounds crazy, right? Nearly impossible, likely. But why? Why shouldn’t we try?
We’ve all committed to some physical regime at some point in our lives to be healthy. But how many of us commit to a spiritual discipline in order to have a healthy spiritual life?
I’m encouraging you to consider your soul health; your heart health. What I discovered missing from my prayer life is my heart and how to pray with it. I want to learn what it means to live out prayer from the heart in the midst of my wildly crazy, kid-friendly, noisy, busy, overcommitted, distracted life.
If you are like me you are already anxious about committing to anything requiring you to make time, effort and sacrifice. I’m not asking you to quit your day job, travel to the desert and live a monk’s life, but I’m wondering if we can find ways to practice living a life of prayer in the midst of our very real “crazy, busy, noisy” world spinning around us.
So what’s the plan?
Next week I’ll share more about what it means to pray with our hearts by sharing discoveries I found when looking back to others who practiced a life of interior prayer of the heart. To share old spiritual markers left behind that can guide us in prayer and hopefully renew our passion for this gift God’s given us.
Ultimately, I hope to join with you in various spiritual disciplines that will challenge our current state of prayer.
I’m as nervous as you, but hope you will share your challenges, joys, lessons or frustrations as we walk through drawing near to God in prayer.
I leave you with this quote as you consider walking this path with me along the wandering way…
“The prayer of the heart is a prayer that does not allow us to limit our relationship with God to interesting words or pious emotions. By its nature such prayer transforms our whole being into Christ precisely because it opens the eyes of our souls to the truth of ourselves as well as to the truth of God.”
Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Way of the Heart: Desert Spirituality and Contemporary Ministry
Will you pray with me?
Comment below if you will be joining in this journey.
Series on Prayer: Part 3
