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.”

The Hope Canteen Podcast, Episode 49: Abiding in Christ, the True Vine

Jesus the Vine

Last week, we explored the image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd. Today, we look at a very different metaphor from John 15:1-8: we are called to abide in Jesus Christ, who is the true vine. 

Jesus introduces this teaching by saying, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower.” He follows this metaphor with four images. First, he says that if he is the vine, then the disciples are the branches that come out of the vine. Second, he tells us that the branches must bear fruit. Third, he tells us that branches that don’t bear fruit need to be pruned back. Fourth, the relationship between the branch and the vine is one of abiding. Like the branch abides in the vine, so we must abide in Jesus.

Join us as we reflect (with too many gardening metaphors!) on bearing good fruit as we are nourished in the life of God.

Click here to listen.

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:

The Hope Canteen Podcast, Episode 37: A Touch of Heaven

The Hope Canteen Podcast, Episode 37: A Touch of Heaven
Episode 37: Mark 1:29-39

This week, we continue to follow Jesus’ early ministry through the first chapter of Mark. Jesus begins to expand his ministry beyond his home town. He also reaches out to touch Peter’s mother-in-law and heal her of a fever. This leads us into a conversation on the importance of touch in Jesus’ ministry and our lives, particularly in a time of physical distancing.

How do you experience the touch of Heaven? How do you find space with God in desert-like seasons of your life? Join us around the virtual table and feel free to add your comments below.

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! — 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.)

Building a Prayer Life (How to Pray – Series Summary)

Building a Prayer Life

We have spent several weeks looking at the life of prayer. We have covered a lot of material, so in this final reflection I thought it might be helpful to highlight what I believe are the four most important points in the life of prayer.

1. Above all else, a prayer life is an intimate relationship with God.

From one perspective, a life of prayer can be complicated. As we have seen, there are many different approaches to prayer and all kinds of techniques for praying deeply. There are lots of different tools, books and apps that one can use. Before we get caught up with all of that, it is essential to remember that above all else, prayer is an intimate relationship with God. At its heart, prayer is utterly simple: God wants to be in relationship with you. And prayer is our side of that relationship. All of the techniques and tools are only supposed to help with that simple goal. If they help, by all means use them! But if they don’t, then don’t use them. It is that simple.

2. Lifting up your heart is the foundation of prayer

Prayer is based on a simple, essential movement. In the Eucharist, we call this ‘lifting up your heart.’ This is a way of putting aside the thoughts and activities of the world and giving your attention to God. The beauty of prayer as lifting up your heart is that you can do this anywhere: at home, at church, in the grocery store, at work… you get the idea. Every method and aid to prayer is only meant to facilitate and enhance this simple truth.

For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy.

St. Thérèse of Lisieux

3. Have a routine and a place for prayer

Consider having a special time and place where you pray every day. In the modern world, we sometimes forget the importance of ritual to structure our days and weeks. Without it, life can often seem chaotic and busy. Daily rituals of prayer help us to recenter and recapture what it is that we are all about. It is also helpful to have a prayer space, even if it is just a favourite chair. Over time, you come to look forward to praying in your space. Obviously, you do not need all of this to pray.

People often point to the Oswald Chambers quotation: “There is no need to get to a place to pray; pray wherever you are.” And I strongly agree with that. But Chambers was speaking to a different question. He was trying to encourage people that you don’t need to go to a church to pray with professional clergy. Prayer is available to anyone at any time. Of course, we can pray anywhere. But if we are going to create a habit, it is essential to have structures in place that will help us to do so.

4. Commit to a prayer life

This is the hardest part. I believe that if we wait until we have time to develop a prayer life, then we probably won’t do it. It is hard to find time to add something new to our lives. What we need to do is to understand how important prayer is, and we always find time for things that we believe are important.

It is not hard to see that prayer is important. I would suggest that this is the single most important activity that we do every day. Think about it… if we really believe that there is a God, and that this God wants to be in relationship with us, and that we were created specifically for this purpose, then spending time in prayer (daily communion with God) is the most important thing we can do. This is merely the law of relationships. For relationships to thrive, we need to put in the time. There is no other way.

Prayer is a special activity. It is clearly an ancient and universal impulse:

From primitive cave paintings to the whitewashed walls of the Royal Academy, the universal impulse to pray permeates and pulsates through human anthropology and archaeology, sociology and psychology. It is no exaggeration to say that to be human is to pray. The question, therefore, is not so much why we pray, but rather how and to whom. For billions of people today, the answer to such questions is to be found in the revolutionary life and teaching of Jesus Christ.

Pete Greig

I pray that your prayer life will grow and be a blessing to you. Though it will have its ups and downs, you will find the rhythm that works for you. Just remember:

Keep it simple,

Keep it real,

Keep it up.

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How to Pray: Confession and Sanctification

Confession & Sanctification

Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you, O Lord.

St. Augustine of Hippo

As part of our worship every Sunday, we take a few moments to lay our sins before the cross, admit them to God, and receive forgiveness. Confession is a central aspect of Christian prayer. As the first letter of John tells us, “If we confess our sins, [God] is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”

Why is confession important? There are sometimes misunderstandings about what we are confessing. We are of course confessing where we have fallen short and not been obedient to God’s commands. But we often fail to appreciate that God’s commandments are a form of shorthand for a much bigger project.

Working for a Bigger Project

A helpful analogy would be to see it like trying to get in shape. Once you make the decision to start, you need to decide how you are going to go about it. Usually, this is a combination of eating well and being physically active.

Let’s say you decide to walk on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and ride your bicycle on Tuesday and Thursday. The activities are important because they are the daily activities that get you closer to your goal. But they are only a part of the bigger project: getting in shape. They are the means to get there.

If you fail to do one or two days, you can recover and still keep improving your health. But if you miss more and more, it becomes harder and harder to get in shape. When you stop altogether, it means you have given up the whole project. Saying that you are walking and biking is a shorthand description for your much bigger project: growing in health.

One Step at a Time

The commandments of God function sort of like the actions of walking and biking in this analogy. They are the day to day activities and moral decisions that we make. They are informed by the ten commandments, the promises of the baptismal covenant, and the great commandments of Jesus. We don’t follow them for their own sakes, but because they move us further along a bigger project.

The theological name for this bigger project is Sanctification. It means to be more like Jesus, or to be holy, or to be purified. Another way to think of it is becoming the person God created you to be. God wants your soul to be whole and well: centered, in rich relationship with others and God, loving, courageous, marked by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, goodness, gentleness and self-control. This list from Galatians 5:22-23 describes the fruit of the process of sanctification.

Wrestling with Our Restless Hearts

Just as health is bigger than the individual bike rides that get us there, sin is more than just a list of things we have done wrong. It is better to describe it as self-sabotage. We are made to be in life-giving relationship with ourselves, each other, and God. Sin is the truth that we have a constant and often subtle tendency to ‘miss the mark.’ St. Augustine tells us that this is because ‘our hearts are restless.’ Away from God, our hearts are not often marked by the fruits of the Spirit. More often, our hearts are marked by loneliness, uncertainty, anxiety, stress, anger, feeling rushed, unappreciated, and on and on.

We try to cover the restlessness of our hearts through distraction and diversion. St. Augustine says we are ‘turned in on ourselves.’ This means that our desires are taken out of their God-given context for wholeness and relationship and are distorted to become focused on our own self-fulfillment, something which never fully happens. Out of this dynamic arises gluttony, lust, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. These are all attempts to still the ‘restlessness’ and arise from a spiritual battle for your heart. This means that confession is one of our greatest tools for healing and growth.

God Answers Confession with Mercy

I hope you can see now that confession is not just a legalistic exercise. It is the way in which we lay before God all the choices we have made that keep us from deeper life in Christ. The cross is the place where we find the mercy of God. Confession needs to be a regular part of our praying routine. Every time we repent and confess our sins, our souls are growing more and more into wholeness and true life.

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