Prayer is the cultivation of a grace-filled relationship with God. We begin experiencing ourselves and the world not as a problem to be solved, but as a reality in which God is acting.
I want all of life to be intimate with the God who made, directs, and loves me. I want to do the original work of being in deepening conversation with the God who reveals himself to me and addresses me by name. I want to witness God out of my own experience. I don’t want to live as a parasite on the first-hand spiritual life of others, but to be personally involved with all my senses, tasting and seeing that the Lord is good.
Every person is involved in both the desires and the difficulties of intimacy in their lives. In every encounter, whether with God or with others, there is the challenge of closeness–the need to break through the defenses of sin in order to be in touch with another.
Prayer is the place where the doubts that come from disappointment and failure are dispelled and faith in the resurrection of love and promise is once again discovered.
Prayer is never the first word; it is always the second word. God has the first word. Prayer is answering speech; it is not primarily “address” but response.”
In prayer we enter into the realms of spirit where wonder and adoration have space to develop, where play and delight have time to flourish.
The primary orientation of spiritual direction is towards God, looking for grace. As we cultivate the practice of spiritual direction we find ourselves working in a field where the Spirit is inventive and the endless forms of grace are never repeated.
Prayer is all about staying alert to the magnificence of salvation. It guards us against the tendency to turn living faith into a lifeless religion.
Praying most often doesn’t get us what we want, but what God wants.