![]() ![]() ![]() The first two pages in this series, explain how to make prayer exciting. Like you, I want practical solutions that really work. A head-in-the-clouds theory is of no use to me. If you need excuses, I have bagfuls, but I believe you want answers. Obviously, God wants us to suffer neither attitude. I tend to flip from stressing out over trying, to giving up. I’ve known repeated frustration, disappointment and defeat attempting it. If you find keeping in touch with God throughout the day almost impossibly hard, you and I are made of the same stuff. Can we, like moviegoers, be intensely involved in a task and yet retain such an awareness of God’s presence as to be able to draw strength and comfort from that awareness? ![]() Living, as we do, in an era in which most relatively mindless tasks have been replaced by machines, the majority of us are left with days crammed with activities that demand full concentration. It demonstrates that ordinary people can be absorbed in something else and yet simultaneously draw comfort and even excitement over someone’s presence. ![]() Nevertheless, the popularity of movie dates is of immense spiritual significance to me. To have someone special is so rare for me that I would want us to spend every second focused on each other, not squander the opportunity on a movie. The Spiritual Side of Going to the MoviesĬan someone explain to me why dating couples go to movies? Honestly, I can’t understand it. Don’t imagine, however, that I find what Brother Lawrence called “practicing the presence” any easier when I’m not in my secular job. To provide my web ministry without charge, I work in a secular job and squeeze this ministry into every remaining spare second. I share with you Twenty First Century pressures. Even when I am thinking about God, most of the time it is more like thinking of a friend who is elsewhere, than someone who is with me, intensely interested in my every thought. A friend of mine began each day with three hours of prayer and yet to his dismay he still found this happening in the rest of his day. So why for hours at a time do we daily ignore the most precious person in our lives? Why is it that, often despite our best intentions, we rob our Lord and ourselves of priceless privileges by pushing the most astounding person out of our consciousness for hours at a time? He never leaves our side and yet our mind is continually wandering away from him, not only ignoring him but actually forgetting that he is even there. Begin the long journey to grasping the magnitude of this truth by remembering the torturous death the Lord of glory willingly suffered, just to be on intimate terms with you.ĭespite it being so astounding as to seem almost beyond belief, the most exciting, most breathtakingly exalted and most in-love-with-you person in the entire universe is with you every second, 24 hours a day, longing for your companionship. The intensity of God’s personal love and devotion to you is truly mind-boggling. If you struggle to believe this, I understand. So intensely personal and so passionately in love with you is the King of the universe that he is with you every moment of every day, eager to respond to anything you might tell him. Can “practicing the presence” really work in the pressure-packed world that most of us face today? He was a cook, not a high-powered business executive or a teleservice center operator, nor in any of the other jobs so typical of our society demanding intense concentration. But this humble man lived in a monastery almost 400 years ago. By that he meant being continually aware of God’s presence, even when engaged in mundane activities. Brother Lawrence succeeded in tapping into the life transforming power of what he called practicing the presence of God. Many of us have heard of Brother Lawrence’s attempt to introduce us to the joyous wonder of gaining full practical value from the glorious reality that God is ever-present. Practicing the presence of God in modern times. ![]()
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