The Power of Place: 5-Day Plan Sample

Prayer is not an executive meeting that we lead where we share our daily agenda and create a punch list for the counsel of heaven to start working on. Prayer is not about clocking in so the boss upstairs knows we showed up to work and did our duty for the day. Prayer is primarily communion. Communion with God. And Jesus, when he disappeared, was fleeing the noise, the swirl, the chaos, and entering into a concentrated and unbroken communion. To pray rightly, then, sometimes requires that you say nothing. Prayer is being there, with God. Listening, breathing, centering down, hearing him pronounce your name in that voice, getting your soul restored and the ill-fitting yoke of the world off your neck. . . .

Jesus said, “the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing” (John 5:19 ESV, emphasis added), which means that a true life of prayer is about gazing. It means that prayer finds its perfected form when daughters and sons stop and stare at the glorious grace to be found in the Father’s eyes. So prayer is communion, and communion arises from friendship. And—now hear this startling claim from Christian theology—God is friendship. I did not say, “God is friendly,” though I guess we might easily affirm that too. But stopping at “God is friendly” is too precious, it falls far short of the forceful claim that God exists as friendship.

Prayer

Lord, thank you for allowing me to have communion with you, and thank you for being my friend. Please surround me with your grace, and help me to feel your presence. Amen.