The Prayer of the Heart

A woman balances on a swing in front of a waterfall, illustrating how the prayer of the heart brings life into balance.

A Series on the Human Heart as the Temple of God, Part 3 of 3

There is only one secret to the spiritual life that you need to know: the human heart was made for God. It sounds impossibly simple, but understand that it is more profound an insight than most people know. Life is busy and complex. It is difficult sometimes to know what decisions to make. For instance, there is nothing simple about discerning how to allocate money and resources wisely. We also struggle with how to get through pain and grief. And yet… for all its complexity, there is a simplicity at the heart of life that can easily get lost.

You Are Your Ability to Love

Who are you? In one sense, you can spend a lifetime learning the answer. But in a deeper sense, you are simply your ability to love. You are your heart. And you were made to love God above all things. I will go out on a limb and say that if you have this right, then most of the rest of your life will fall into place.

This is the foundation of everything else. It is why Jesus says that ultimately all the laws of God boil down to two: love God and love your neighbour. Make sure that loving God is first and the neighbour is second. Why? It is not because there is a competition between God and everything else, nor is it because God needs to know that God is first. Rather, it means that making the love of God your highest aim sets everything else in place.

One reason life can be so difficult is that our loves fall easily out of balance. This is the real meaning of idolatry. Created things like money, desire, power, possessions, and relationships are all good. They only become problematic when they are loved and desired out of balance. Giving them God’s place in our lives and attention distorts everything else.

Keeping on Track with the Prayer of the Heart

How do you keep God first and everything else in balance? One way is through prayer, particularly the Prayer of the Heart. If you explore this prayer practice, you will probably find a simple and powerful way called the Jesus Prayer. This is a humble plea for God’s love and mercy through one repeated phrase: Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy upon me. Christians have used this prayer for centuries to help keep their lives centred on God.

The human heart was made for God. The heart is the dwelling place of God, the temple of the Holy Spirit. We can distill the Prayer of the Heart even more than these seven words, and say that it is only about bringing our hearts before Jesus. To really experience this truth, we must strip down our prayers and come before God just as we are, in all our poverty. By that I mean without big thoughts about God, with no desire to impress or get something, no excuses about our behaviour or choices, no big plans for how life should be, no thinking about how important or rich you are. Just you – plain and simple, stripped down. Find the simplest words you can to express love, and then stay there.

The Prayer of the Heart is Reaching with Love

The Prayer of the Heart seems so simple that most people pass it by, yet it carries the deepest wisdom. Carlo Carretto tells us,

“Don’t try to reach God with your understanding; that is impossible. Reach him in love; that is possible.”

God really only wants you to know one thing: that you are loved and that you are called to love others. When you pray, keep the logic of it simple, and you will find that wisdom will meet you in the practice.

As I end this series, I invite you to meditate on these words by Carlo Carretto that sum up the Christian vision of the Prayer of the Heart:

“The love of God is by nature pure, balanced and holy. Whoever is dominated by it lives in deep peace, has an ordered view of things, and knows the meaning of true freedom. But the love of God, too, passing into our heart must be worked at, cultivated, pruned, fertilized. And the most uncompromising farmer is God.”

Growing Open Hearts

Part 2 of What Does God Really Want from You: A Three-Part Series on the Human Heart as the Temple of God

There are many things you won’t tell everyone: certain memories, feelings, hopes, goals, and so on. You probably don’t make them known because you feel that if others could see the “real you” they wouldn’t understand. You know you have found a good friend when you feel safe enough to open these areas of your life to them. A good friend understands and can be trusted with your deeper life; you can “let them in.”

Where exactly are you “letting them in?” The answer is your heart. You heart is the name we give for the deepest part of you. It is where you are most real and authentic. The heart is your inner sanctum. It is the ‘who’ of who you are. One helpful thing about seeing your heart as an inner sanctum or inner room is that it allows us to imagine how expansive it is.

Growing Open Hearts

Think of the story How the Grinch Stole Christmas. After the Grinch tries to stop Christmas by stealing all of the presents from Whoville, he is shocked to hear the Whos still singing. He realizes,

“What if Christmas… doesn’t come from a store. What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more?”

He realizes that Christmas is about love.

And what happened, then? Well, in Whoville they say – that the Grinch’s small heart grew three sizes that day.

I know that feeling. I don’t think I was ever a Grinch, but before I had kids, I thought I knew what love was. As it turned out, my heart just needed to grow. Since I became a parent, I have felt my heart expand larger and larger with love every year. That’s the thing about the heart: it can grow!

Open Hearts to God

When have you felt your heart grow bigger? God wants all of us to grow hearts large enough to embrace all of creation! We have a long way to go, but God promises to meet us there. St. Catherine of Siena tells us that there is a room in each one’s heart where no man, no woman, no devil, no angel can go. Only you and God can enter that interior space. God wants to be present with you there and grow your human heart. I invite you to let God in just as you let in a friend. In a way, the life of discipleship is a long process of opening our hearts to God. Christians have explored it through a practice called The Prayer of the Heart, which we will talk about next week.

In the next few days, spend some time exploring your heart. What things make you feel open and relaxed? What things close you off and make you retreat inside? Who do you let in? Who do you keep out? There are no right or wrong answers here; this is only about self-knowledge. What are you learning about your own heart?

How Do I Pray Best? (Six Questions for Every Christian to Ask, #2)

How do I pray best?

Prayer occupies a central place in our lives as followers of Jesus. Prayer assumes that God is not distant and impenetrable, but that we can approach God, and that God listens and is somehow reachable in our prayer. Our liturgical tradition describes just one of many ways to express prayer to God.

If we can communicate with God, we can also listen to God. People have developed various ways of prayerfully listening to God through the Bible, through silence, by meditating with words or images or music, and in community. In all of these, we presume that prayer helps us to relate closely to God, and that God is in fact relatable. This is why we have chosen “How do I pray best?” as the second in our series of six questions every Christian needs to ask.

Called to Worship God

Two thousand years of followers of Jesus–and millennia of people walking with God before then–have practiced ways to call themselves and each other to the worship of God. We do not pray alone. We can rely on their work and wisdom as we both grow in prayer and deal with all those things that can make us forget God: boredom, wealth and ease, distractions, hardships, fears, attractive things, lies, and the many wanderings of our own hearts.

Deuteronomy 8 records Moses teaching God’s people as they are preparing to enter the Promised Land, reminding them about what is most important. Over and over, he says, Remember the Lord your God. Do not forget God. Remember how God has led you. If our relationship with God defines who we are, prayer helps us remember. How do you personally remember God and walk with God each day? How do you turn toward God who calls you into relationship? What are the ways you hear yourself called back? How do you hold the anchor of your life?

How Do You Pray?

We are complicated beings, and so people pray in different ways. And people pray differently in different seasons of their lives. Is serving others your prayer? Do you meet God walking in the woods? Gazing at the sacred image of an icon? Memorizing scripture? Wrestling through questions of faith? Sitting in the sanctuary? Pouring your heart out with a small group? Gathering with your church family? Moving your body? Do you give your prayer voice in music or art? Do you meet God in silence? In the suffering? What are the touchpoints of your life?

Perhaps start by asking if you have gifts and interests that you can turn toward your relationship with God. Are there ways of prayer toward which God seems to be nudging you at this time? Then remember that God is already here, and sometimes we just need ways to be reminded.

The only way each of us can truly discover how we love to meet God is by taking the journey of prayer, learning from others, growing in love. Because that’s the heart of it. Every model and method of prayer has the same aim: to give ear and expression to our relationship with God, centering our lives on Christ who seeks us.

This is based on a talk from our 2021 Lenten learning series, Re-boot Your Spiritual Life. You can watch the full version here:

Fasting for Lent

How do you observe Lent?

In the Anglican church, it is common to hear someone ask, “What are you doing for Lent?” The answers are a mixture of giving something up and taking on something new. You often hear things like:

“I am giving up chocolate for Lent.”

or “I am cutting back on alcohol.”

or “I am going to read the Bible more.”

or “I am going to volunteer at the soup kitchen.”

The question often arises, why do we fast and take on disciplines for Lent? Is there something earth shattering about giving up chocolate? The answer is no. So why do it? Here are four simple but profound reasons.

Fasting for Obedience

1) The first reason is that Jesus asks us to do these things (see Matthew 6:1-18). It is about obedience. Of course, he doesn’t specifically ask for chocolate. That is not the point. Rather, it is part of a three-fold challenge from Jesus that gives focus to Lent. It is traditionally listed as prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.

These are meant to be serious practices, but not legalistic ones. Jesus wants us to pray because prayer is the language of our relationship with God. It is how we grow closer to God. Jesus wants us to fast because fasting allows us to find freedom from unhealthy habits. And Jesus wants us to give alms because it is an expression of care and compassion for people in need, and we need to practice doing that. Giving up chocolate or alcohol or whatever is an expression of fasting and doing without, not for its own sake, but for education and healing.

Learning through Fasting for Lent

2) Fasting is partly about learning. I don’t mean about facts, but about deep inner truths. It helps us realize that many people live in poverty and will never have what we are struggling to do without. We grow in humility as we see that we can do with less than we think we need, and that we have resources that can be used to help others.

In the book of Isaiah, fasting is closely connected with justice. The prophet criticizes those who fast and do other religious rituals, while simultaneously perpetuating injustice. He writes, “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry…?” (Isaiah 48: 6-7a). Part of the purpose of fasting is to help us develop a heart of compassion, which leads to generosity of spirit.

Fasting for Reflection and Growth

3) Fasting for Lent also teaches us something important about our inner life: we need heart healing. This is Jesus’ main goal. He calls us to fast because he wants us to grow deeper in maturity. The problem is that we have many unhealthy habits and attachments in our lives. For instance, let’s say I fast from all sugar during Lent. It doesn’t seem big. But the reality is that I would find that hard. I am used to quite a bit of sugar in my diet. Therefore, when I find it hard, I need to ask myself, why? What am I learning about myself? What am I learning about what I serve?

Now let’s imagine that it is so hard that I find myself getting irritated at my kids or wife. Again, I need to really think about this. What is it within me that is struggling? This should be easy: just stop eating sugar. But why don’t I have the patience and strength?

In truth, it is not easy. And this is the point. We don’t mature and grow unless we push beyond what is comfortable. If everything is comfortable, we stagnate. Giving up chocolate or alcohol–or whatever–amounts to putting controlled spiritual and emotional stress on our lives. This is partly so that we can push through it. But the real reason is that it gives us a glimpse into our souls and shows us we need healing.

Fasting for Lent for Healing

4) Healing is the point. God is nothing but love, and looks with compassion on our struggles. God wants to heal our souls, and this doesn’t happen quickly. The New Testament doesn’t distinguish heart, soul and mind in the same way we do. They are a whole, and inside are a mixture of positive and negative emotions, impulses and drives. There is compassion, hospitality, courage, love, and a host of other good stuff. There is also anger, fear, lust, unhealthy hungers, violence, prejudices, and a host of other bad stuff. They are all mixed up together.

Part of the Good News is that Christ came to bring healing and wholeness to human beings. He brings grace, mercy, and love to transform our hard hearts into soft hearts. This is neither a simple nor a quick process.

We tend to hide our hurt, pain, and negative emotions. But if we bring them into the gentle light of Christ with honesty and humility, he will heal them over time. Sometimes we need to do this soul work with another person guiding us, be it a spiritual mentor or a psychologist.

Fasting for Lent helps us to find the areas of hardness in our hearts by surfacing what needs the most healing. The next step is to pray for God to heal those places. Spend time in prayer for your inner being. God wants to birth within you a new creation. This is the deeper meaning of fasting.

Advent Traditions and the Incarnation

Advent Traditions & the Incarnation

At dinner time every evening, my children fight over who gets to light the Advent candle. This is one of our favourite Advent traditions. The desire to light the candle has little to do with piety and much more to do with the novelty of playing with fire. Nevertheless, I believe the simple act of delighting in striking the match over time anchors the deeper meaning of Advent. I hope that it at will sink in over years of lighting hundreds of candles. This is part of why I believe that physical traditions of Advent and Christmas are so important. Lighting a candle, putting up a tree, hanging lights, listening to Christmas music, giving to charity, baking goodies, wrapping presents, and more.

Traditions that Accent the Gospel Message

None of these are the Gospel message, but they accent it. They give us a concrete way to express the joy and wonder we experience as we meditate on the birth of Christ. God made us flesh and blood, not just souls. Jesus Christ did not just come as a proclamation. He came as a baby that his mother could hold and caress and physically love. The church has always recognized that we need to express our faith in physical ways. We break bread together in Eucharist, we adorn our church in beautiful colours and fabrics, we sing together, process with a cross, light candles, and exchange the peace. All of this helps us to embody the Gospel in our lives in simple and beautiful ways.

What are your favourite Advent and Christmas traditions? This year, consider renewing your appreciation of what they mean. For instance, when you light the Advent candles, meditate on the fact that fire represents the light of Christ. Or ponder the meaning of what hope or peace or joy or love might mean to you this day. When you put the star on the top of tree, let it remind you of the star that brought the wise men to Jesus. But even if you are not able to enter deeper into these truths this year, just enjoy the physical action of the traditions. They speak nevertheless.

Keeping Awake: Discerning How God Speaks

Keeping Awake: Discerning How God Speaks

Welcome to the season of Advent, the time of preparation for the coming of the Christ child, the one who brings light and blessing. The message of Advent comes from the Gospel lesson we read last Sunday. Jesus says, “And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.” (Mark 13:37) What does it mean to keep awake? There are different ways to answer this, but at the simplest level, keeping awake means listening to God and getting to know how God speaks.

What Being Blessed Really Means

Once, when Jesus was teaching (Luke 11:27-28), someone was deeply touched by his wisdom. She exclaimed how blessed Jesus’ mother must be for giving birth to such a child. I am guessing that the speaker was also a mother who wanted to express her gratitude. Normally, Jesus might have agreed that his mother was pretty special, but here he answers differently to make a point. He says, “On the contrary, blessed are those who hear the Word of God and observe it.” One of our most important tasks is to listen to the Word of God.

God is speaking to you constantly. Are you listening? This is the question that Jesus wants us to take seriously. God does not usually speak to us like we speak to one another. Because God uses a different kind of speaking, we have to develop a different kind of listening.

How God Speaks

First and foremost, God has spoken through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. This is why we call Jesus the Word of God (John 1:1-3). To understand what Jesus’ life says, we turn to the second most important way God has spoken: through the writings that tell the story of Jesus, that reflect on the meaning of his life, and that tell the story of his ancestors. These are the Scriptures. We listen to the Word by reading, praying and reflecting on them. God also speaks through history, including the events of your life and the people you know.

This way of listening may be unfamiliar to us, and so the meaning is not immediately obvious. For this reason, listening becomes what we call discernment: a considered, prayerful process of tuning our spiritual ears to God’s voice.

The Call of Advent

Advent is the promise that Christ is coming. He comes at Christmas, but he also comes every day. His grace and love is constantly active. Do we see it? Do we hear it? Are we a part of it?

This Advent, consider how you listen to God and how you discern God’s voice. God is speaking to you. Are you listening? Do you keep awake?

Book Study: Surprise the World! — LEARN Jesus

Surprise the World! - LEARN

In this series, we are looking at Michael Frost’s book, Surprise the World!, with its challenge to live surprising lives. He uses the acronym B.E.L.L.S. to describe what this might look like. In our last three reflections, we looked at the first three letters, which stand for BLESS, EAT, and LISTEN. Today, we turn to the fourth habit: LEARN Jesus.

Frost talks about how important it is to LEARN Jesus Christ. He reminds us that everything we do as Christians is about Christ; it is built into our name. Jesus Christ is the reason for our hope. He is the one who has won our salvation and who teaches us what life with God looks like. Therefore, it makes sense that as Christians, we should know Jesus really well.

Catch the Jesus Wave

Frost tells the story of going to speak at a gathering of Christian surfers in Australia. He asked them who their favourite surfer was. They gave several different answers, but it was also clear that everyone was in awe of one superstar surfer: Kelly Slater. When Frost asked them to tell stories about Slater, the room erupted. People talked about all kinds of feats and awards.

Then he asked them to talk about Jesus. There was some silence, even though this was a Christian group. Some said things like ‘He’s Lord,’ or ‘He died for our sins.’ These doctrinal statements led to the point Frost wanted to make: what would it be like if they knew Jesus as well as they knew Kelly Slater?

Jesus is our teacher, our mentor, our guide, our saviour, our brother, and yes, our Lord. He did some amazing things, and taught profound wisdom. But if we are going to live like him and tell others about him, we need to know him as well as those surfers knew their hero.

Learn Jesus

Frost challenges us to spend some time once a week learning about Christ. The best way to do that is ‘a deep and ongoing study of the biographies of Jesus written by those who knew him best – the Gospels.’ Frost says that we need to not just read about Jesus, but to immerse ourselves completely in the Gospels, in the work and words of Jesus. In this way, we come to know Christ better and better, while we are drawn deeper into his life and are formed by him. This is our purpose. C.S. Lewis puts it like this:

In the same way the Church exists for nothing else but to draw people into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time.

Frost suggests three ways to know Jesus better:

1) Study the Gospels to Learn Jesus

Read, reread, and reread the Gospels. This doesn’t exclude other study, and you don’t have to do this all at once. But the Gospels are the heart of our faith because they tell of Jesus, the heart of everything. Set aside a period of time every week to learn Christ.

2) Read about Jesus

There are lots of great books about Jesus, both at a popular and scholarly level. Some suggestions:

Simply Jesus by N.T. Wright

Jesus the Fool by Michael Frost

King’s Cross by Tim Keller

The Challenge of Jesus by N.T. Wright

3) Movies about Jesus

No movie captures everything about Jesus. By exploring a range of films, we can see how people encounter Jesus even today. Some of them, like Godspell, aren’t true to life, but seek to capture different aspects of Jesus’ character and action.

(NOTE: These reflections are only meant to be a synopsis and study of Michael Frost’s work, Surprise the World! Our purpose is to encourage our readers with these great ideas. If you interested in going further, please go read the book. We encourage you to support your local independent bookstore.)

Book Study: Surprise the World! — Listen to the Holy Spirit

Surprise the World: LISTEN

In this series, we are looking at Michael Frost’s book, Surprise the World!, with its challenge to live surprising lives. He uses the acronym B.E.L.L.S. to describe how this might look. In our last two reflections, we covered the first two letters, which stand for BLESS and EAT. Today, we are looking at the third habit: LISTEN to the Holy Spirit.

Listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit is crucial for our missional life. Frost tells us that we need to be attentive to the guiding of the Holy Spirit as we move out into the world to bless people and to eat with them. We need the Holy Spirit to help us in this crazy and complex world. We need the grace of the Holy Spirit to help us not to give into the two mission killers: fear and laziness.

It is easy to be afraid of what people will say when they find out that we are followers of Christ. Laziness tells us that we don’t have time and that we should take care of ourselves first. It is good to take care of ourselves as long as we don’t get stuck there. The grace of the Holy Spirit calls us into both/and rather than either/or.

We don’t just listen to the Holy Spirit for guidance. It is also about spending rejuvenating time with God. God’s call on our lives is more of a marathon than a sprint. To be effective, we also need to be centered. In his book Satisfy Your Soul, Bruce Demarest writes,

A quieted heart is our best preparation for all this work of God… Meditation refocuses us from ourselves and from the world so that we reflect on God’s Word, His nature, His abilities, and His works… The goal is simply to permit the Holy Spirit to activate the life-giving Word of God.

The paradox of living a missional life is that for the extraverts, being a blessing to people and eating with them is a real blessing, whereas the idea of sitting quietly seems like a drag. On the other hand, introverts can enjoy the silence but dread the effort of getting out and being with people. Frost writes that while he appreciates the dilemma, we need to be balanced. We need both the action in the world, and the nurturing time with God. For those who are not used to time in prayer, he suggests picking one significant period of time each week in the presence of God. In this way, we step outside the frantic and harried nature of life, and we will have something to give those around us.

Here are his suggestions:

1) Set Aside a Designated Time

Don’t try to do this on the run or whenever you find time. Set aside a block of at least twenty minutes to listen to God.

2) Eliminate Distractions

The quieter and less busy the room, the better. If there is a distraction, then your mind will go to it. Turn the phone off.

3) Let God In

Start by simply enjoying God’s presence. If you find your mind wandering, use a short prayer to bring you back.

4) Follow God’s Promptings

The Spirit might bring something to mind, like someone’s name or face. Pray for them and be on the lookout for ways to be a blessing to them. Learn to discern the movement of the Spirit in your soul over time. Frost writes, “As we become more familiar with listening to the Spirit as a kind of weekly rhythm, we’ll also find ourselves becoming more adept at hearing the Spirit in real time, in the midst of encounters with our neighbours, as we bless or share a meal or otherwise get in the way of the people around us.” LISTEN.

(NOTE: These reflections are only meant to be a synopsis and study of Michael Frost’s work, Surprise the World! Our purpose is to encourage our readers with these great ideas. If you interested in going further, please go read the book. We encourage you to support your local independent bookstore.)