An Invitation To Intimacy
"Call to me and I will answer you
and tell you great and unsearchable things
you do not know."
~ Jeremiah 33:3 (NIV)
What if God does not demand prayer as much as gives prayer?
What if God wants prayer in order to satisfy us?
What if prayer is a means of God nourishing, restoring, healing, converting us?
Suppose prayer is primarily allowing ourselves to be loved, addressed and claimed by God.
What if praying means opening ourselves to the gift of God's own self and presence?
What if our part in prayer is primarily letting God be giver?
Suppose prayer is not a duty but the opportunity to experience healing and transforming love?
~ Martin Smith, "God Is a Conversation", Union Life Magazine, vol. 18, no. 4 (May/June 1993), p. 8.
When a man is born from above, the life of the Son of God is born in him, and he can either starve that life or nourish it. Prayer is the way the life of God is nourished. Our ordinary views of prayer are not found in the New Testament. We look upon prayer as a means of getting things for ourselves; the Bible's idea of prayer is that we may get to know God Himself.
~ Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest (Westwood, NJ:Barbour & Co., 1935), 28 August.
Posted by Ruth at 2/10/2005
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