Prayer: A Deeper Connection with God.

This year during Lent we are examining how we pray – in an effort to both dispel some of the myths about prayer and grow in our experience of prayer.  Too often with think of prayer as a transaction. I ask and God answers (if I am worthy).  This kind of thinking undermines our ability to draw close to God in prayer.  Prayer is not a form of transaction but instead it is all about connecting and experiencing the depth of God’s love, concern, passions, and joy with us.  Truly understanding how prayer brings us closer to God can happen only as we experience prayer – in any of it’s amazing forms.  Come join us every Wednesday in March at 7 PM for life changing prayer experiences.

Listed below are some of my favorite prayer quotes from Henri Nouwen

  1. Joy is the experience of knowing that you are unconditionally loved.
  2. Prayer is first of all listening to God. It’s openness. God is always speaking; he’s always doing something.
  3. I am deeply convince that the necessity of prayer, and to pray unceasingly, is not as much based on our desire for God as on God’s desire for us. It is God’s passionate pursuit of us that calls us to prayer.
  4. A spiritual life without prayer is like the Gospel without Christ.
  5. It might sound strange, but God wants to find me as much as, if not more than, I want to find God.
  6. The only way to pray is to pray, and the way to pray well is to pray much.
  7. The real “work” of prayer is to become silent and listen to the voice that says good things about me.
  8. I know the only way for me to see the world is to see it through his eyes.
  9. To pray, I think, does not mean to think about God in contrast to thinking about other things, or to spend time with God instead of spending time with other people. Rather, it means to think and live in the presence of God.
  10. Converting our unceasing thinking into unceasing prayer moves us from a self-centered monologue to a God-centered dialogue.
  11. Prayer without action grows into powerless pietism, and action without prayer degenerates into questionable manipulation.
  12. If prayer leads us into a deeper unity with the compassionate Christ, it will always give rise to concrete acts of service.
  13. Prayer is not what is done by us, but rather what is done by the Holy Spirit in us.
  14. To pray means to stop expecting from God the same small-mindedness, which you discover in yourself. To pray is to walk in the full light of God and to simply, without holding back, “I am human and you are God.”
  15. Why is it so important that you are with God and God alone on the mountain top? It’s important because it’s the place in which you can listen to the voice of the One who calls you the beloved. To pray is to listen to the One who calls you my beloved daughter, my beloved son, my beloved child. To pray is to let that voice speak to the center of your being, to your guts, and let that voice resound in your whole being.
  16. If we don’t have a hidden life with God, our public life for God cannot bear fruit.
  17. The faithful discipline of prayer reveals to you that you are the blessed one and gives you the power to bless others.
  18. To pray is to listen to the One who calls you “my beloved daughter,” “my beloved son,” my beloved child.”
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