Teach Us to Pray Pt. 7 :: Contemplative Prayer

In John 15, Jesus proclaimed, “apart from me you can do nothing”. In saying this, he invites us into a deep, intimate connection with Him. Not just for ourselves but that we may bear fruit for the sake of the WORLD.

Prayer, as we know, is the blood flow of life in the kingdom. It’s the air we breathe, the food that nourishes our souls, and the drink that quenches our thirst.

Yet for many, it has become too easy for our prayerful connection with Jesus to be pushed to the margins of our lives - squeezed into brief moments between busyness and distraction. 

For others, prayer comes hand in hand with disappointment. Years of seemingly unanswered cries have left many feeling confused and forgotten.

But it’s time for us to reimagine a life of prayer infused with purpose, hope, and power.

Together, we’ll press into what it means to develop a CONVERSATIONAL life with God — both in the secret place AND in communal agreement.

We’ll expand our imagination for what prayer is and what prayer can be.

Both intercession & contemplation

Adoration & petition

Silence & singing

Lamentation and delight

It all belongs together.

Join us for a season of seeking God together.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Thanks for joining us today as we listen to a portion of the message recorded at Vine Life Church in Boulder, Colorado. If you'd like to connect with us further, you can visit us online at www.vinelife.com.

SPEAKER_02 0:16

Expressions of that reality. And the last one there was a there was some lines in there about you never stop working. Even when we're lost, even when we're in these spaces, you never stop working. And contemplative prayer is a form of prayer that helps us grow in the awareness of that. And so I'm gonna see if I can get there a little bit. This is this is a nonlinear topic. When you enter into the process, surprise happens. And we're gonna practice a little later. So today we're continuing on in our in our series on Teach Us to Pray. And Luke started us off with an overview, beautiful overview, and exploring the Lord's Prayer and all of the verses in the Lord's Prayer when he was asked, Teach us how to pray. Each of those verses can be unpacked and opened up into many, many forms of prayer that we've practiced over the time and over ages throughout the body of Christ. Piper took us further into adoration with our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. And Jeanette brought us into a greater understanding of petition. Give us this day our daily bread and this desire of the Lord also to give us these things, but to hear us. He knows what we need, but he continues to want to engage with us. Indeedy creatively helped us see the reality of intercession, your kingdom come when she beautifully built this tabernacle with props here and moved all the way through into the Holy of Holies, which we're invited to all the time because the veil's been torn. Bob took us through the very challenging subject of unanswered prayer that can be seen in your will be done. Jesus' prayer in the garden was unanswered. Let this cup pass from me. That was an unanswered prayer. But something amazing in that happened for all of us and happened for the whole world, and his surrender to that will brought reconciliation to us all. And there was a sentence in there, God's silence is not the same as his absence. And that I'm gonna spend some time in today. And then last week we had Stephen Roach here, and he spoke on imaginative prayer. He reminded us that we're all creative, we're made in the image and likeness, so there's how could we not be? We get to all bring the reality of what God's done in us and through us out into the world, and Lord help us there. We get to consummate it. And he gave a very beautiful, uh touching, prophetic word for vine life. And if you haven't heard it, I really want to encourage you to listen to it. It was absolutely beautiful, brought me to tears. And if you believe it, if you we accept it and you believe it, I ask us to pray that we could consummate it, that we could consume it and consummate it, bring it all the way into our being, allow it to transform us, let the transformation happen that happens as a word is coming from being heard to the manifestation. If we don't cooperate and allow what the Lord's asking us to change or do differently or transform in our lives, we may not see the manifestation of those words. So I just want and contemplative prayer also helps us in that process. And today I get to teach on the beauty of it, of contemplative prayer. I believe that contemplative prayer is a way for us to engage with the Lord, and I'm just gonna, there's no slide for this in Ephesians 4, 3 through 6, where it says, we get to engage with the Lord in endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body, one spirit, and even as we're called in one hope of our calling, there's one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in you all. And that's also a piece here when we engage in prayer and we engage in contemplative prayer. All of these are our endeavors to enter into that space together as a body of Christ, into the calling that we have, we've all been called into that unity. And God help us come into the place and the space of it. Then also it's the verse from the Lord's Prayer on earth as it is in heaven. Um, contemplative prayer, I believe, over time helps us. It's not an instant karma thing, it's not an instant message, it's not instant oatmeal, it's not instant anything. Contemplative prayer is slow. Contemplative prayer is oftentimes it's it's very simple, but it's not easy. Uh it's a simple, simple practice. There's seed that that is already planted in the depths of us that the Lord wants to water. There's a spring, that spring that comes forth from each one of us, that spring of life that the Lord talks about. And it's allowing and opening up to allow the depths of that spring to move from the deepest places within us, to water the seeds and bring life to the things that we've been given in Christ. We can try that in lots of different ways and we might find it. But contemplative prayer is something that helps us see and learn and be aware of where we're standing in our own strength, where we're standing in our own knowledge, where we're standing in our own understanding, where we're in all of these places, and um we we wonder what why the Lord's not doing anything. He is. He never stops working. Uh, contemplative prayer helps us come into the awareness of that underlying presence. So um uh it's slide one. I'm way off. So slide one. Um this is out of Acts. God, who made the world and everything in it, since he's the Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands, nor is he worshipped with man's hands, as though he needed anything, since he gives to all life, breath, and all things. And he has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and their boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord in the hope that they might grope for him and find him, though he is not far from each of us. For in him we live and move and have our being, and as some of your own poets have said, for we are his offspring. So this is Paul talking to the people at Mars Hill, describing something. And if we could find our way into the truth of that in our own lives, if we might discover that that's who we are in our own lives, not just in a place of mental faith, but in a reality of living, moving, and breathing. As we walk on the earth, this is who we are. We are his offspring, and we are aware of the one in whom we live and move our have our being. He's not far from us at all. And it feels like we're often groping for him, even in contemplative prayer. There's a striving that takes place there, it appears. But that striving is only the striving to enter his rest that's described in Hebrews 4. That's all that is. It's not a it's not this white knuckle anything. So my hope is today that we'll discover how spending time with God in silence can enrich our awareness of our relationship in Him, just as King David and many other children of God have done throughout the centuries. Uh David sang in Psalm 62, 5, My soul, wait silently for God alone, for my expectation is from Him. And the sons of Korah sang in Psalm 46, be still and know that I'm God. I'm going to start by reading a poem. I've already started, but I'm going to continue by reading a poem that expresses, that attempts to express what often occurs in a contemplative practice. This poem is entitled How Good to Center Down. It was written by the 20th century Baptist pastor, Christian mystic, and activist prophet Howard Thurman. It was published in 1953. What makes him an activist prophet is that he was a black man, an African American man, a person of color, whichever you choose. Man who was a mentor of Martin Luther King's. And he was a mystic. And at some point in the 60s, he taught at universities and has doctor's degrees. He moved to San Francisco and opened a church, co-pastored a church with a white pastor that was open to every race. And so there's the prophetic act of someone who's come to know that there is nothing that separates us. That happened in the early 60s. This poem was 1953. How good to center down, to sit quietly and see oneself pass by. The streets of our minds seethe with endless traffic. Our spirits resound with clashings, with noisy silences, while something deep within hungers and thirsts for the still moment and the resting lull. With full intensity we seek ere the quiet passes, a fresh sense of order in our living. A direction, strong, pure purpose that will structure our confusion and bring meaning in our chaos. We look at ourselves in this waiting moment, the kinds of people we are. The questions persist. What are we doing with our lives? What are the motives that order our days? What is the end of our doings? What are we trying to go? Where are we going? Where do we put the emphasis and where are our values focused? For what end do we make sacrifices? Where's my treasure and what do I love most in life? What do I hate most in life and to what am I true? Over and over, the questions beat in upon the waiting moment. As we listen, floating up through the jangling echoes of our turbulence, there's a sound of another kind, a deeper note, which only the stillness of the heart makes clear. It moves directly to the core of our being. Our questions are answered, our spirits refreshed, and we move back into the traffic of our daily round with the peace of the eternal in our step. How good it is to center down. Slide two, David. In another song we sang this morning, it was this song about our breathing and our breath. There's this beautiful place here. I just want to start with this thought. We breathe about 960 resting breaths an hour, 23,040 breaths a day, 8,409,600,000 a year, and the person who lives to about 80 will be given 672,768,000 breaths in a lifetime. Slide three. We'll go to heartbeats. The average resting heartbeat can range from 60 to 100 beats a minute, but for this example, I'm going to call it 75. This means that this person's heart would beat 108,000 times a day, 39,492,000 per year, and a person who lives to 80 will have experienced approximately 3,153,100,000 life-giving beats of our heart. We think we're in charge. And if we step into an awareness of it, as we step into awareness of it, not circumstantial or situational, but an underlying pervasive habitual awareness, even when, even when, even when I'm having trouble, even when my soul is troubled, even when my mind is racing, even though I can't find the end to the solution of the thing that I'm thinking about that is giving me grief, even when all those things are taking place, love, the love of God is giving us life and given us life abundantly. We cannot stop it. We could, we can take our own lives, but I don't know what happens beyond here, personally. So what am I gonna do? Am I gonna stand in some arrogant place, which I have many times? God, most years of standing in this arrogant reality inside of myself that I have this all figured out. I got it. I understand this. There's a joke. That's a joke. I understand aspects of it, and it's continuing to be opened up and explained and expressed all the time. There are things in here that have been used, been taught to me that have enslaved me over the years. They've bound me over the years. There are things in here that have opened up and freed me over the years. Beautiful things. I love them. I love this Bible. I love the book. I love the written word. I love the living word even more. I love the word that has spoken me into being, along with everything else and everyone else. The word that is Jesus Christ, the living word here on the earth, that lives in me, that I live within, that we abide in. That's the presence we've been invited into. It's the thing that we try to get to every Sunday. Hope we're there. We come sometimes there. We come hoping to get there. There's beauty in this life that we have. And the beauty of contemplative prayer is that it brings us right into the middle of humanity in order to find God here. Slide four. I'll just call the slides out, David, because my notes are gone. So Colossians 1. So everything comes from and consists in God, including us. For by him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things consist. The New American Standard Version and the English Standard Version and other translations say in Colossians 1.17, He is before things, and in Him all things hold together. We consist in Him. We are held together. I like the word contained. We're contained within Him. Everything's within Him. So He is that which is holding everything together. He is that love which is containing all of it, every bit of it all the time. And so contemplative prayer over time can bring us into that again, habitual, underlying awareness of the living word, the meaning of the Word, apart from our egoic need for description. My ego likes description. I want things pretty well defined. Tell me how that works. Show me how this is, all those things. My mind, my small self, my old self, my old man really likes those things, loves them, to the point of, you know, I have reams of paper written. I've got lots of books and all kinds of things that want to show me the truth, those things that I that to help me understand it between my ears. Help me understand it in this mind. Well, the mind of my heart, the mind of my heart, that's the the one that's being enlightened, the one that's opening up, comes in, is already aware of everything. It's already aware of the presence of God. It's why we're invited there. We've been invited there by the Lord. Step into this place. This is a Hebrews 4 reality. You get to enter into the rest. You get to strive to enter into the rest. I don't like to enter into the rest because when I try it, what shows up for me is me. What shows up for me is my small self, my egoic self who wants to do all these things for God. I want to do all these things for you, Lord. I can do it. And he's like, sure you can. I trust you, I believe in you, absolutely. Come on. And come on in and know me at a deeper place. Come and know me in a deeper reality in your own being. In that part of you, that aspect of you, the core of you, that even when you're messed up, I'm still loving you completely. You're held in me. You're not someone else. Even when you're depressed, you're not far from me. I'm not away from you. I'm not somewhere else. The demonic wants to tell you so and will torment the crap out of you so that you don't think you are there. But the reality is I never leave you or forsake you. So come on in. Let go of who you think you are. Let go of who you think you are. We've been part of this series, we we went through Pete Gregg's. We've been, we looked at Pete Gregg's, he did this beautiful. Pete Gregg is the guy who started the 24-7 Burn Prayer Movement. He's uh he's a beautiful man. And he's he uh had a he wrote a little practice, a study of prayer, and we've looked at some of those things together as in our preparations. I have. And I believe, and Pete made this sentence here. He said, contemplative prayer is the silent enjoyment of God's loving presence. And I read that and I said, Ah, I believe this is a beautiful statement of outcome of someone's consistent practice over time. That's what that is. It's true, it's absolutely true. True. But it doesn't start there often. And so I want to talk about that a little bit. How do we get through what happens when we begin a practice like this? Slide five, David, please. Pete said the contemplative journey has three stages: meditation, which is me and God, contemplation, which is God and me, and communion, which is only God. I like to put the word in instead of and personally. Me in God, God in me, and only God in those places. So I was in a conversation with a dear friend this past Monday who's been engaged in contemplative prayer for many years. And I mentioned these thoughts to him from Pete. And he said, that seems true to me as well. I think there's another earlier stage, which is the only me stage. There's another one up in front of that that's only me. And I said, I agreed. I agree with that. Because sometimes when I've sat in silence, and still happens, honestly, I'm I'm pretty dedicated to sitting every day. And sometimes when things are going rough, I'll sit two or three times a day. Because I want to know. That underlying awareness, God help it bubble up, rise up. So we begin our practice and immediately are filled with unending thoughts. Oftentimes they just show up. We sit down, real, you know, set our timer. We might have our prayer word. We're ready to go. We take a few breaths. Jesus. Lord have mercy. What's the weather gonna be like today? When I leave here, I'm done. I can sit here for 20 minutes, and when I'm done, I'm gonna get in my car and boom, bad doom, bang, bang. It keeps rolling. And oftentimes, that's on a that's that's just a normal day. On a good day, what I would consider a good day. Jesus. Lord have mercy.

SPEAKER_01 24:31

Holy, holy, holy. Lord God Almighty. Early in the morning, my song shall rise to thee.

SPEAKER_02 24:50

And I think I'm contemplating God. I think that's what I think. On a bad day. Lord have mercy. Oh God. I'm not so sure what's going on today. I feel so God, my kids, I just feel my heart is just aching. Oh God. And I just fall into whatever thoughts or stories come up around that ache in my heart. And I spend twenty minutes in that place. The me stage. It's all about me. But over time, if we will remain, and I just hope my today, my hope today is to encourage us is to give it a chance or another chance if you've tried it. Let it work in you. Let it work in us. Let the drawing of the Lord occur. Because He's the one that's drawing us down into the depths of Himself, into the depths at the core of our being, into the one in whom we live and move and have our being. He's the one who's drawing us there and bringing us into asking and coaxing us, loving us into an identity that we might not have been aware of, that has is filled with love and filled with peace, and looks at every other person on the earth and knows that they are in the same condition. And that, you know, maybe with a word, maybe with an awakening of the Holy Spirit, they can come into the awareness of the one in whom they live and move and have their being. They could recognize the reconciliation that has happened through the cross and recognize the blood of Jesus that's being poured over all those thoughts and feelings and emotions to bring them into another state of being, into another place where they aren't separating us any longer from his love. That's what happens in contemplative prayer over time, over time. In the beginning, it's a lot of days, can feel like that. Sometimes there's these moments, this upflowing happens. We're practicing, we're practicing, and an upflowing happens, and all of a sudden, as as Howard Thurman said, that's the sound, the ears of our heart hear the truth of the Lord inside of us. The ears of our heart, that can happen in many ways. It happens in worship. It happens in the reading of the word. It happens in all forms of prayer. It can happen more consistently from my observation, my subjective opinion. It happens through this place of taking a practice, of being in this practice and allowing, allowing this arrogant pride that I have that thinks I got this whole thing figured out. I know what's best for the world. What's best for the world is Jesus Christ and He's already come. He's already died. He's already risen. He's already living in us. And all of these other things will be taken care of. They are being taken care of, and we get to cooperate, and we get to bring reconciliation and redemption and the life and the love of Christ to all our friends and neighbors, to the earth itself. It's all real. We get to do that. So the first stage is that stage, the me stage. We're getting out of it. I would like you to give yourself permission, if you can, to get out of your head. I bless you and say, I give yourself permission. Lord, I give you permission. I give myself permission to get out of my head. I give myself permission to not believe that the things that are running through here are who I am. This is who I am. Because that's also what happens there. We believe that. Everything we think is we who we believe we are. And then we cry out for the identity in Christ. And then we cry out for something else. I have some really good scriptures in my life that have been given to me that are beautiful scriptures, that some of them I have a little bit of awareness of walking in. Some of them are pasted in my brain. So I rely on them. I'll go to them when things get bad. And the Lord's like, well, I want you to know that that's true. Come on here and let's find the root of it. Let's find the depth of it. Let's find the core of it. Because that's where it's coming from. You get to get out of your head. So over time again, if we practice and re-tractice of focus and refocus, and we'll go in, we'll practice in a minute here. That space between our thoughts, the pictures that we have, the feelings. Sometimes it's just visceral, it's just physical feelings that we're having that are so either comfortable or uncomfortable that they keep us, they distract us into something, and a story comes up about it. It moves in all those places. I'm not praying to God apart from me, away from me. I am praying in God. I'm already in him. That begins to increase in us. And if we have that going on, it's absolutely beautiful. Contemplatives over the centuries have equated this practice of focus and then refocused to becoming aware of the space or silence between and around the thoughts or pictures. The thoughts and pictures are being like leaves in a stream or clouds in a sky. Earlier there were some amazing clouds out there. Now they're pretty wispy. I was thinking, well, maybe they'll stay and I can use them for. But they but they disappeared. They've gotten thin. So when the thoughts come, some of those thoughts, they're absolutely gorgeous. Pristine leaves, very white, beautiful clouds. They're beautiful. I love the beautiful clouds floating through the sky, and I just focus on them. Other times they're dark clouds. They're clouds that are a little bit like, whoa, there's something in there. And when they bundle up together, when they all come together, storms happen. And oh my God, you know, I'm a little concerned about that. So those that's what happens in my own thinking as well in these places. And the Lord is like, nope, come on, son, refocus. Uh let's sit down. Every as soon as you catch yourself down the road with holy, holy, holy, as soon as you catch yourself five chapters into what you're going to do for the rest of the day. As soon as you catch yourself in any one of those places, simply go back to your breath, the awareness of your breath. Bring that word in, Jesus. Lord, have mercy with your breath. And refocus and hold there and stay there until the silence begins to be aware. You're aware that there's a space. But you couldn't hear me if there were no space. You would not understand me if there were no space between these words. It's minuscule. But you couldn't understand me. You couldn't understand the songs this morning if there was no space. There were some intentional pauses in that music. Beautiful that brought the whole, brought the music to life and brought the songs to life. It's the same inside of us. As we become aware of the spaces, that which things are moving from through and to, there's something carrying them, there's something moving them. And as we become aware of the space of that, it begins to increase. I realize, we realize it's God in me and God. I'm in God. I'm in God right now. Over more consistent time, we become aware of God in me. This is not only that God is within me, but I am in God. We've gone from me, which is just thinking, to a place of meditation. We're into contemplation, this contemplative prayer place here where we're sitting in the reality of in him all things consist. We're beginning to be in that. I'm in him. Everything's in him. God is, it's not, it's I'm in God, God's in me, we are one, the Father and I are one. The reality of that begins to rise up in our being, an awareness of it. It's not a thought. It's not written down. Oh, I pull it out, I'll set my timer to remind me. Oh, God and I are one. Go back into it. It begins to emerge and just be. Our being is here. We are sons and daughters of the Most High God. That's who we are. And contemplative prayer helps us move in that space. And then sometimes, sometimes, it's odd. I don't understand it. I don't know how it happens. I can't, I haven't done it, I haven't been doing much in any of this, as you can tell. Anything I've just been talking about, I haven't been doing much except remembering to try to refocus. And after a while, the word goes away and the awareness is just there while the clouds are moving. The awareness just is as the clouds are moving. I'm just abiding in this place as the thoughts are moving. And good, bad, ugly, magnificent, creative, whatever they are, they're just moving. And I'm not grabbing onto them for a period of time. And sometimes, sometimes communion happens where there's only God. And I can't tell you what that is or is like. I have no way to express that. There's no words for it. There's no words for that. And I don't know how that happened. I don't know. I don't know. All of a sudden, I've been sitting there and I'm very conscious. And then all of a sudden, I'm back into contemplative prayer. There's a consciousness that's happening of God. And then I'm back into God and me. So that spot is just a beautiful place of prayer. And it's it's available to every human being, every human being. So I just wanted to thank Pete Gregg for starting these thoughts off and jumping, jumping around. I better get moving. Helping us in that space, helping me with it. Hebrews 4, 9 through 15. I didn't give you that one, David. Therefore, there remains, therefore, a rest for the people of God. For he who has entered his rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from his. Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest any wind fall according to the same example of disobedience. For the word of God is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and it's a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. There is no creature hidden from his sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. Seeing then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in our time of need. I believe this is an experience, an expression of contemplative prayer as well. There's probably a thousand ways that that scripture opens up or more for people in their lives. But I believe contemplative prayer is one of those expressions. It's a place where we cease from our works. I'm no longer working to take apart my thoughts and put them into categories and make a plan out of it and develop it into something else, positive or negative. I'm no longer taking these pictures that are existing in me and doing things with them while I'm in that place of prayer. I'm resting there. And the thoughts and divisions are coming up. My heart is being divided, the thoughts and intentions, the deeper thoughts and intentions, the ones way down, maybe underneath my conscious mind in my subconscious and unconscious mind, in the places deeper within me that maybe more I react from than I act from. I react from places inside of myself. Traumas. I'm talking about traumas at one point. My traumas around, I was a Vietnam veteran, traumas. I've had traumas. They show up viscerally. Somewhere out of my unconscious and subconscious, they react. I react to something, I've reacted to something, I've responded to it, I've created a story around it, and I've hurt myself or other people sometimes from those places. In the presence of the Lord, in these in these spaces of contemplative prayer, beauty opens up in there. The acceptance opens up in there. Where I don't belong opens up in there. The feelings that rise up in me around those, around shame and guilt, fears, insignificance, insecurity, all of those deeper places in the core of this human person open up in the places of contemplative prayer. They rise up. They rise up. They're just clouds. They're just leaves. But God, they feel so real for me. But all they are are clouds and leaves. So Lord, help me refocus and sit and come into the awareness that, oh, this is just moving through. This is just moving through. It's all it is. The one in whom I live and move and have my being is holding me together. This container is here. So when I gather with people, we gather with people to sit down and talk. Can we become aware of this container together? Can we do that? Because then things start to become safer for everyone. If we're all aware of it, things become safer. When I'm talking with people who aren't yet sure if they are about Jesus Christ in the world, friends, people who aren't sure yet, if we get into the container, we become aware of that. The reality of that. I become aware of it, they become aware of it. All kinds of things move. Beauty happens, and the love of Christ reaches. That's what happens in those conversations, in those small places. So practice, you know, come into a practice, come into a practice. This ongoing contemplative practice has helped me in the awareness of, you know, we have axioms in our cohort teachings. And some of you aren't in the cohorts yet, so that language might have just gone. But if it didn't, you know, there are things that we've talked about. That God is always present in that work. God meets me right where I am. And one of the earlier ones was the goal of discipleship is union with Him. Those places have, contemplative prayer has tremendously helped me in those places. Because sometimes I'm not so sure God has, where I've been present, I'm not so sure God is. That's what's happened for me in many places. You know, I'm feeling whatever it is I'm feeling, rejection, or you know, I'm using a lot of negative things, but that's kind of what's what's there. That's you know, that's what's in here sometimes. I feel rejected or I'm feeling uh whatever it might be, abandonment or or whatever it might feel, but it might be that I'm feeling inside of myself. Mostly for me, those things are not so they they end up here, but they start deeper for me. They're down in my guts, they're down in here somewhere, they're feelings that I have. And if I sit with them and allow them to be and just remain aware of them in a contemplative posture, in a contemplative prayer, uh something begins to move. And I find that if I'm not creating stories around it, the stories are moving. They're just moving. But if I'm not attaching myself to the story of the feeling that's going on in there, the presence of God uh is is is embracing me. It holds me, he holds me. Uh and I begin to feel like oh man, this I I don't have to carry the shame, you know. I don't have To carry the sense of insecurity that I'm feeling or insignificance that I might be having in this circumstance or situation. And it's a beautiful process over time. There are some things that it helps get the leaven out. The leaven of Herod and the Pharisees. Contemplative prayer can help get these deep leavens out that we are unaware of. We don't know who put them in. Into our cultures, into our societies, into our families. We don't know where it came from, but there's something that we're reacting to and we're still experiencing, and we want the leaven of the heaven, of the kingdom of heaven. We want that with all of our being, but sometimes we don't know how to get the leaven out. God does. He shows it to us. He lets us become aware of it and then reveals himself underneath of it and inside of it, cleaning it out. And something changes. The underlying habitual awareness increases. I'm only in God. That's the only place I have life is in Him, in whom I live and move and have my being. That's where we're headed. So I'm gonna we're gonna take a couple minutes right now, if you're okay with it, to practice. So we're gonna just sit for a few minutes. So one way that's easy to start practicing is called the Jesus Prayer, and it comes from Jesus' parable in which a Pharisee loudly thanks God that he's so blessed, and a despised tax collector prays, Lord have mercy on me, a sinner. Slide six, please. Also, he spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves, that they were righteous and despised others. Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself. God, I thank you that I'm not like other men. Extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector, I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I possess. And the tax collector, standing far off, would so much, not much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. That's where that prayer came from when the desert fathers back in the first three centuries began practicing in this way. They began to recognize that their thoughts and what was happening in their mind was keeping them separate. They were so exalted in their own thinking that they said, What can we do? What scripture can we use? Let's use that scripture. Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner. I've exalted myself in all of these high places. But when I sit down and just try to be still with you, God, I'm all in my own strength. I'm all in my own strength. So Lord help us here. That's where that started. And it's so you can pick a word, just get comfortable. Straight back chairs are great for this. It's not so good to slouch. If you can, you know, it doesn't matter. You can lay down flat, you can do all kinds of things. But it's but if you if straight back chairs are good, uh we're gonna sit for four minutes, which will be really fast. Maybe. Uh I'm gonna set a timer with and it and when if you're at home, do a set of timer. Uh work your way up to 20 minutes. I like to sit for 20 minutes. I've been it's been a suggestion that I found really helpful uh for me. And again, sometimes I've needed to sit more than once a day because of what's happening in my being. And just finding that time. Let your body relax with your hands on your lap. You can close your eyes or keep them open. If you choose to keep them open, just kind of look down at the floor a little bit. Be present where you are, and again, give yourself permission to get out of your head. Say the Jesus prayer in your heart. Lord, have mercy. And as we start this, become aware of your breathing. I'm not talking about you taking breath. I'm talking about becoming aware of the breathing that's already happening. And let them go as deep as you can. If you're breathing up in your chest, try to let them drop down into your solar plexus and into the into your guts, down into your deepest part of your lungs. Just let them drop if you can. Remain present here as best you can. When you're tempted to follow a thought or a picture or find yourself having done so, remember to simply observe it as a leaf on the water or a cloud in the sky, and refocus on the awareness of your breath and your prayer, your prayer word. It can be Jesus, it can be love, it can be mercy, it can be grace, it can be Jesus have mercy. On me, a sinner, if you want to go there, you can. We're just gonna sit here for a while. Stay with your breath and the prayer until you discover stillness. Let the word you're repeating go once you discover stillness. If you catch yourself again having grabbed onto another thought or drifted into thoughts, either positive or negative, simply begin to solve problems, or simply begin to solve process problems. Just come back one more time. Just repeat the process. There's no guilt or shame here, only the love that's holding us all together. When the timer goes off, uh slowly open your eyes if they were closed or lift your gaze. So here we go. I'm gonna read this poem one more time. How good it is to center down, to sit quietly and see oneself pass by. The streets of our minds seethe with endless traffic. Our spirits resound with clashing, with noisy silences, while something deep within hungers and thirsts for the still moment and the resting low. With full intensity we seek ere the quiet passes, a fresh sense of order in our living, a direction, a strong, sure purpose that will structure our confusion and bring meaning in our chaos. We look at ourselves in this waiting moment, the kinds of people we are. The questions persist. What are we doing with our lives? What are the motives that order our days? What is the end of our doings? Where are we trying to go? Where do we put the emphasis and where are our values focused? For what end do we make sacrifices? Where's my treasure and what do I love most in life? What do I hate most in life, and to what am I true? Over and over the questions beat in upon the waiting moment. As we listen, floating up through the jangling echoes of our turbulence, there's a sound of another kind, a deeper note which only the stillness of the heart makes clear. It moves directly to the core of our being. Our questions are answered, our spirits refreshed, and we move back into the traffic of our daily round with the peace of the eternal in our step. How good it is to center down. Let it be so, Lord. So please take some time this Thanksgiving to practice if you can this week or in the future weeks. If any of you want to talk further about this, you can get a hold of me here. You could come Thursday morning to meet with Monty and I at the Red Frog and Mamma. Just want to pray for the forest here. It was prayed last week. I will pray it again and we'll continue that for the eyes of our hearts will be the mind. And we'll begin to see a weather, which is we can make this life up. We cannot give ourselves another breath or another heartbeat. Or already existing in a lot of so magnificent. We get to become aware of them. We get them become aware of them. We get to grow in the place again. Go and please wonderful thanks again. Thank you.