Contemplative Mental Prayer

"Seek in reading and you will find in meditation; knock in prayer and it will be opened to you in contemplation"  -  Carthusian Guigo II

I believe one of the greatest failures of our day is not teaching people how to go deeper in prayer to God.  It's like we start them off in the same way and then twenty years later, not much has changed in the way people pray.  God is taking me deeper into meditation of God's Word as well as contemplative prayer.  Here are five areas to we can dwell and mentally enter into as we contemplate a deeper life with God through Christ.

1.  Think about heaven for twenty or thirty minutes.  Picture yourself running and falling at Jesus' feet.  Focus and image sitting in your heavenly Father's lap.  Join the celestial choir of heaven as it sings "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, Who was and is and is to come" in Revelation chapter four.  Imagine heaven and you are already there!

2.  Think about the passion of Christ.  How it broke his Mother's heart.  How Jesus brother John felt?  Or Peter hiding somewhere but watching from a distance.  Keep your eyes on the many scenes of the passion of Christ, torture, crucifixion and death.  Let your tears water the garden of your soul.

3.  Think about your misery and God's mercy.  Think about how God's love is greater than our sin and weaknesses.  Our sufferings and miseries can be a pathway to Christ.  Suffering and restoration lead us into the deep presence of God.  In dying to self, we are changed into love.  We go from a severe mercy to a magnificent mercy.  On the cross, Christ embraced our misery so that we might know God's mercy.  By contemplating Christ, we begin to see ourselves as Christ sees us as we offer our limitations to God.

4.  Praise God for who He is as you enter into the divine mystery of the divine Trinity.  Let thanksgiving overflow into kingdom prayers.  Enter into God healing the brokenhearted, setting the captives free and thanking God in advance for greater fruitfulness and a great harvest of people coming into God's kingdom.

5.  Mystical and contemplative prayer is where our words end and God's words take over.  It is the Holy Spirit praying through and in you.  It is where our heart beats to the heartbeat of God.  We hardly even know what we are praying because it's not really us praying but God praying prayers to us and back to Himself.  These prayers can be so intense and passionate where one prays out loud at the same time with others.  These prayers clash together like a great symphony of heaven where angels set our prayers on fire by the flame of God's Spirit.  This is the prayer of the Holy Spirit.