Prayer and Meditation

23 Jesus replied, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. 24 He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.
25 "All this I have spoken while still with you. 26 But the Counsellor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. 27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”
John 14:23-27

Richard Foster in his book, Prayer - Finding The Heart’s True Home, explains the process of meditative prayer:
“In Christian meditation we seek to live the experience of Scripture. As a practical aid in living the experience of scripture, Ignatius of Loyola encourages us to apply all our senses to our task. We smell the sea. We hear the lap of water along the shore. We see the crowd. We feel the sun on our heads and the hunger pangs in our stomachs. We taste the salt in the air. We touch the hem of His garment.
“Suppose you want to meditate on Jesus’ staggering statement ‘my peace I give to you.’ Our task is not so much to study the passage as to be initiated into the reality of which the passage speaks. We brood o the truth that he is now filling us with His peace. The heart, the mind, and the spirit are awakened to His flowing peace. We sense all motions of fear stilled and overcome by ‘a spirit of power and love and of self-discipline’ (2 Tim 1:7). Rather than dissecting peace, we are entering into it. We are enveloped, absorbed, gathered into His peace.”

The point of this “Centering Prayer” is to give over to God our whole beings: our minds, our emotions – our very souls. The use of Scripture as a focal point keeps us in tune with the Father’s will and helps us to hear His words more clearly with every fibre of our being. The goal of this prayer is to join with God in understanding, at the very core of our being, the meaning of His promises and His will for us now. In this we do not empty ourselves of who the God has made us, but rather, we take into ourselves more of Him and therefore we become more like Him. Joyce Hugget, in Listening To God, suggests using a seven-step process of Reading, Receiving, Reciting, Regurgitating, Responding, Resting and Realigning.

We can do this with the words of Jesus as noted above. We can do this with narrative scenes from all parts of the Bible and through a Spirit-inspired imagination see ourselves in different roles from observer to participant. We can do this with the many prayers themselves recorded in the Bible and thereby make them our own. This form of prayer is true dialogue; interaction with God and His Word directed by the indwelling Spirit. It requires giving and receiving, speaking and listening, asking and obeying.

Why not try this today. Perhaps with the promise of Jesus made to His disciples in the Upper Room before the most difficult few days of their lives: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you”.

Mike Clarkson