The
10-Day silent retreat I attended was focused on centering prayer. Centering Prayer is a discipline of praying
without words. Your full attention is
focused on just being with God. The recommended time period is twenty minutes
two times a day. I have only practiced
it that way during two seasons of Lent.
My working, doing the dishes, paying the bills life does not seem to
allow for that much time to be devoted to prayer. On the silent retreat, however, I was praying
like that for 3-4 hours a day. It was
intense. The sessions were thirty
minutes. That may have been a welcome
challenge for those who have made room in their lives for twenty minutes a day
two times a week (at least it appeared that way to me), but for me it was
difficult to keep my mind focused only on the presence of God using my sacred
word to remind myself of the intention of my prayer.
A great centering prayer time is
when the gong, signaling the end of a session, surprises me. That’s when I know that I have been with
God. Being with God in centering prayer
is like laying out in the sun for a while. You are doing it because you want
your skin to turn dark. You want to be
transformed. You expect that after a
certain amount of time you will get a little brown. That is how it is with centering prayer. You can’t see your transformation happening
as you are praying. You might notice, as
I did, that it was a little easier that time to be less distracted, but you
can’t judge or evaluate your centering prayer.
You just do it. You do it
expecting that it is doing something to you, something for you, something you
very much want. You want to glow in
God’s glory. You want to be the person
He created you to be.
Centering prayer is like the May snowfall
that did not stop for about 24 hours. It
just dropped and dropped and dropped all day long. I wondered if we would get snowed in. You don’t have weather reports or anything
while you are there. Well, it stopped
and it melted just as quickly as it came.
Snow just does that; it comes and goes on its own timetable. So does intimacy with God. One centering prayer session is
out-of-this-world lovely. You can’t
explain it; you just know that was good.
The next is okay. It’s like snow.
It’s like God. It’s all good.
Centering prayer was very active
and cleansing for my soul, not to mention the joy that God loves me so much
that He delights in my decision to will to be with Him. I am recognizing that the center of my
experiencing the Divine Presence is my will.
My distorted will is the only thing keeping me from ruling in the
Kingdom of God now. My weakened will
succumbs to Satan’s schemes to draw my will away from willing to be one with
God.
Romans
8:26-27 describes the prayer without words.
In the same way,
the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for,
but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our
hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s
people in accordance with the will of God. Wordless prayers are gifts of the Spirit. He prays when we can’t pray. He prays when we can’t express what we were
created to express to our merciful heavenly Father.
God
always wants the best for us. His
goodness is what draws me to prayer that does not use words but uses only the intention to be
with Him and receive more fully the love He has for me.
Copyright © 2017. Deborah R. Newman teatimeforyoursoul.com All Rights Reserved.
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