Thoughts on prayer from Henri Nouwen; taken from “Letting Go of All Things.”
“...we realize that the closer we come to God, the stronger will be God’s demand to let go of the many “safe” structures we have built around ourselves. Prayer is such a radical act because it requires us to criticize our whole way of being in the world, to lay down our old selves and accept our new self, which is Christ...In the act of prayer, we undermine the illusion of control by divesting ourselves of all false belongings and by directing ourselves totally to the God who is the only one to whom we belong. Prayer therefore is the act of dying to all that we consider to be our own and of being born to a new existence which is not of this world. Prayer is indeed a death to the world so that we can live for God.”
2 comments:
What do you think this means?
"...a death to the world..." by praying???? Not sure if I see that or do that when I pray, do you?
juice
juicy~ i think he's talking about worldly things~ dying to all the crap that doesn't really matter but the world says it does...surrendering everything and being content in that- caring only about the things that God cares about....that's a death to the world.
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