Prayer: From Seeker to Sought
by Keri Wyatt Kent
posted 9/21/2007
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Sometimes, though, we respond too quickly to the stirrings in our soul, hence misreading them. We feel needy, we feel desire, and we mistakenly feed that desire with food, or drink, or entertainment. But if we were to wait—to pay attention to the longing—we would eventually discover that what we truly hunger for is more of God.
If we think prayer is all our idea, we have made God too small and ourselves too big.
Still, we need not wait around for God to call. If we desire communication with God, we can trust that God put that desire in our hearts. The relationship of love is fertile soil, and our desire for our beloved grows freely there. And we can act on it by boldly approaching the throne of grace.
In his classic book Life of the Beloved, Henri Nouwen wrote that the essence of the spiritual life is "being the Beloved," that is, realizing the extent of God's amazing and unconditional love for us, so that it affects not just what we know but who we are.
"What is required is to become the Beloved in the commonplaces of my daily existence and bit by bit, to close the gap that exists between what I know myself to be and the countless specific realities of everyday life," Nouwen wrote.
"Prayer is where I allow God access to the 'commonplaces of my daily existence' and listen to his guidance and advice on those areas. By listening, I transform myself from someone who just has a nice idea that keeps me a little hopeful, to actually embracing my identity as one who is not just loved, but is the beloved." (read more in Listen)
What is it that makes you want to pray? What do you think of the idea that your desire for prayer is actually initiated by the object of those prayers?
And what could you do to go deeper, to find the hunger for God hidden beneath all your other longings and desires?
Copyright © 2007 Promiseland.
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