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Contemplation from The Prayer Course by Pete Grieg
Contemplative prayer is silent enjoyment of God’s loving presence.
Teresa of Avila describes contemplative prayer as the prayer of quiet. This kind of prayer is intimate sharing between friends.
Richard Foster describes contemplative prayer as “a loving attentiveness to God. Talk recedes to the background, and feeling comes to the foreground.”
There are three themes for contemplative prayer –
- Consumed with God’s love
- Quiet or silent meditation with Christ, enjoying His presence without doing or saying anything
- Experiential without being logical
Pete Grieg says, “It’s more like stargazing than astronomy…or more like listening to jazz than a talk.”
To engage in contemplative prayer, focus your thoughts on the Lord. Sit quietly or walk slowly…
The contemplation journey has 3 stages:
- Meditation: “Me and God”. It starts with the hard work to focus on God and His presence—maybe using a phrase from Scripture.
- Contemplation: “God and me”. At this stage, the center of gravity shifts, as you become even more aware of God.
- Communion: “only God”. At this point, we are so aware of Him, we stop thinking of ourselves.
Prayer at its:
- Simplest is asking God for what you need;
- Best is relational and a two-way conversation;
- Deepest is communion or silent relationship with God.
Let us seek to focus our minds fully on Jesus. Teach us to be still and know you. Make us contemplatives in the heart of this world!
The Prayer that Turns the World Upside Down by Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr.
In the petition, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” Jesus is further explaining what it looks like for God’s kingdom to come from heaven to earth.
Praying “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” also reorients our own sense of personal autonomy and sense of control over our own lives and situations. This petition causes us to forfeit all our personal claims of lordship and sovereignty over our lives. This petition expresses a humble resignation to and desire for the reign and rule of God.
As J.I. Packer noted, “Here more clearly than anywhere the purpose of prayer becomes plain: not to make God do my will (which is practicing magic), but to bring my will into line with his (which is what it means to practice true religion).”
A Layman Looks at the Lord’s Prayer by W. Phillip Keller
“Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together against the Lord and against his anointed, saying, “Let us break their chains and throw off their shackles.” The One enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs at them. – Psalm 2:1-4
Here, in this simple request, the thought is, “Heavenly Father, may Your will be done in this bit of earth, in me here and now, just as it will be done someday on this earth.”
The single greatest deterrent to the accomplishment of God’s will is the fact that we as human beings have our own wills. We carry out our own ideas in response to our own wills.
Consequently we find ourselves faced by the fact that there are two wills moving separately, sometimes in harmony, sometimes in confrontation: God’s will and my will. And the Christian’s primary responsibility is to see to it that his human will responds to and complies with that of his heavenly Father. Well over ninety percent of all Christian growth and maturity and holiness lies in achieving this end.
Do you see how much anticipation and excitement fills your Father’s heart as He looks on you and holds you in His hands? If only His will can be done in your life—in this bit of earth—a bit of heaven can be produced in your life.
His will and wishes are conveyed and transmitted through the medium of His Word. It is the water of the Word—the expressed will of God—that finds fulfillment in fashioning you to His will.
“Father, thy will be done in earth [in clay], in me, as it is done in heaven.” Do you really mean this? Do you really want it? Do you really enjoy having it happen to you?
Rebellion, resistance, and confrontation are the catchwords of our time. So it is not the least surprising to find many who are simply unwilling to submit to the will of God. It is considered stupid and demeaning to do what our Father in heaven wishes us to do. Because of our personal, perverse, powerful pride this is extremely hard for us to accept.
Yet in spite of all this resistance, the Word of God comes through clearly and with enormous emphasis. “Obey and live! Disobey and die!” “Obey and be blessed; disobey and mee disaster!” “Comply with My commands and find life abundant; ignore them and be cut off!”
In God’s Word and in God’s view, obedience and love are so intimately intertwined that we cannot separate them.
Jesus Himself emphasized:
“You are my friends, if you do whatever I command you” (John 15:14).
“If a man loves me, he will keep my words” (John 14:23).
To love Him is to obey Him. To obey Him is to do His will. To do His will is to have a bit of heaven on earth!
God’s will carries within it all that has been set in motion for our welfare and benefit. He has our best interests at heart.
How does one reach the place where he really wants to do God’s will and enjoy it? There are several definite steps we can take in this direction:
- With the help of God we determine to cooperate with God’s purposes.
- Having made this very determined and definite decision, we then ask God, by His gracious Holy Spirt, to invade and permeate our minds, wills, and emotions, especially our wills.
- As we set ourselves to obey God, as we decide and in practice to actually do what God asks us to do, we discover God’s Spirit is indeed given to us (Acts 5:32). “For it is God [by His Spirit] which works in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13).
- As we deliberately respond to the directions and instructions that come to us from God’s own Spirit, speaking through His Word, we will find the energy and strength and courage to do what He asks of us.
- The final result is to find ourselves in complete accord and harmony with the will of our Father in heaven. This is to experience joy, serenity, usefulness, worth, and enormous adventure in our walk with God as we move in accord with His plans and purposes on this planet.
This in essence is precisely what Christ had in mind when He instructed His disciples to pray, “Thy will be done in earth [in me] as it is in heaven.”
What a joyous experience!