Contemplative prayer focuses our minds on Christ and lifts our hearts and souls above our daily way of living life with its worries about self-preservation and survival. It frees us from the bondage of being consumed with what will happen to us and opens our heart to experience peace with God. It carries us above the need of trying to control and understand every detail of our lives.
Contemplative prayer focuses our minds on Christ as the resurrected Lord reigning over an everlasting Kingdom. Jesus doesn’t want us to lose hope in this world but wants to empower us with His love and presence so that we might live in it now and with Him forever. When I realize I’m His beloved child living in a moment by moment relationship with the God of the universe, the weight of the world is lifted off my shoulders.
The power of contemplative prayer is the change of focus in our hearts from our thoughts being centered on us to our thoughts being centered in Christ. (Contemplation: Seeing the World through God’s Eyes) Anytime you and I worry the focus of our heart is centered in the wrong place. When we seek and meditate on His presence and love alone, the cares of the world lose their grip on us.
Contemplative prayer ushers us into an intimate relationship with the triune God who holds everything together and a new way of living moment by moment in a kingdom far more breathtaking than anyone can think or imagine. Let the Holy Spirit lead and inspire your steps in vibrant new ways of hope and walk in newness of life in the presence of the Living and Eternal God.
Ephesians 1:17-19 I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. NIV
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