What is prayer?
March 26, 2007
Question 4: What is prayer?
Past “What is…” Posts:
Question 1: What is the gospel? | Response
Question 2: What is truth? | Response
Question 3: What is evangelism? | Response
[For more information on what to do with this post - go here and here.]
Tags: ACTS, Prayer, Unanswered-Prayer
Posted in 
Adam Walker Cleaveland: I am a 28 yr old 
March 26th, 2007 at 12:11 pm
Prayer is interacting (silently and verbally, bodily and action-ally) with the God who indwells you.
March 26th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
I really like what Mother Teresa said one this one.
Once someone asked her what she said to God when she prayed and she responded “I don’t say anything. I listen. And if you don’t understand that I can’t explain it to you.”
I love prayer as the idea of opening up the space to let God communicate with us, rather than filling that space with our words to him.
Rather than prayer being the space in which we speak to God, I think prayer is the space in which we let God speak to us.
March 26th, 2007 at 2:15 pm
Prayer is entering into divine intimacy.
Some people are clumsy or demanding prayers - just as there are clumsy or demanding lovers.
March 26th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
Prayer is a way of life. St. Paul said, “Pray without ceasing,” and I have taken it to mean that, more than just engaging in an internal (and occasional external) dialogue with God, we need to live our lives as if all we do is laid before God. Frederich Beuechner says that prayer is dangerous precisely because it forces us to confront the very challenging reality that we are engaged with something eternal. We aren’t six-year-olds pleading for candy; we are children of God coming before the creator of the Universe, offered a place at the table not through our own merits, but because of the unbounded grace of God. Why waste it praying for an “A” on a math test? How about the courage to stand in the place we’ve been given by God and owning who we are, judged and forgiven?
March 29th, 2007 at 10:58 pm
Prayer is the dance between us - individually and collectively - and God, who is teaching us the steps. We all pray; some of us just refuse to admit it, others like to try to dominate the choreography.
March 30th, 2007 at 10:35 am
Prayer is dialog with God.
June 5th, 2007 at 3:15 pm
I’m still learning what prayer is…..I better understand what it is, by understanding what it is not.
It’s not a wish list.
It’s not a please help me list.
It’s not a get me what I want form letter.
It’s a way of life.
It’s a conversation, a song, a thought, or a tear.
I find myself asking for things less and less.
I still ask because God tells me to make my requests known.
But once I ask, I stop.
He heard me the first time.
Instead, I see prayer as just a conversation or lifestyle between me and my creator, my father, my friend, and the one who guards me.
July 20th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
I think prayer and meditation are the same thing. It’s getting quiet. It’s being grateful. It’s listening. It’s sharing your intention. It’s surrendering worry. It’s trusting the creative power of God. It’s being still.
“Be still, and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10
“Learn to be still” Don Henley & The Eagles
Another non-Christian (who completely understands the spirit, I think) says:
“Imagine throwing a little stone into a still pond and watching it ripple. Then, after a while, when the ripples settle down, perhaps you throw another little stone. That’s exactly what you do when you go into the field of pure silence and introduce your intention. In this silence, even the faintest intention will ripple across the underlying ground of universal consciousness, which connects everything with everything else. But, if you do not experience stillness in consciousness, if your mind is like a turbulent ocean, you could throw the Empire State Building into it and you wouldn’t notice a thing. In the Bible is the expression, “Be still, and know that I am God.” this can only be accomplished through meditation.”
-Deepak Chopora, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success p. 16-17
Replace “consciousness” with “God,” and “meditation” with “prayer” and you’re onto something…
I think this is a great example of “finding God in the Other” as discussed in the podcast of the same title by Samir Selmanovic on the Emergentvillage.com web site.