The Least is often the Most! Simply Talking to God!

Prayer is a word that describes a relationship. Disciplines of prayer provide patterns for attending to God throughout the day. Prayer is a divine dialogue through an intentional encounter with the creator of the universe. The prayer disciplines open our gaze and bearing to God. Prayer is sustained less by duty. It is increased by a desire to connect and grow in intimacy and communion with God.

Acts 4:23-31  
On their release, Peter and John went back to their own people and reported all that the chief priests and the elders had said to them. When they heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God. “Sovereign Lord,” they said, “you made the heavens and the earth and the sea, and everything in them. You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our father David:

“‘Why do the nations rage, 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 one.'

Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen. Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. Stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.”After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.

 … an amazing text that grants some very articulate postures for the purpose of praying and directly experiencing God. Our devotion to prayer brings about a radical transformation. It is an inward posture of humility, dependence, and responsiveness that changes us.

We look upon prayer simply as a means of getting things for ourselves, but the biblical purpose of prayer is that we may get to know God Himself. - Oswald Chambers

Prayer is talking with God. Any encounter with God will bring about transformation… radical transformation.

Henri Nouwen is considered a pioneer and leader in the modern spiritual formation circles. He struggled a great deal with depression during his life. Yet, he finds a super natural comfort in prayer. Nouwen writes, “To pray is to descend with the mind into the heart, and there stand before the face of the Lord, ever-present, all seeing, within you.” He also wrote; “Prayer is the way to both the heart of God and the heart of the world – precisely because they have been joined through the suffering of Jesus Christ…prayer is letting one’s own heart become the place where the tears of God’s children merge and become tears of hope.”

Prayer is the radical transformation of the heart that is not interested in the manipulation of the spiritual… in contrast: The follower of Jesus prays so as to allow the Spiritual to manipulate, grow, and advance the physical.

You know I love ya, Don