THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK
Persistence, prayer and being open to the coming of God’s presence into our lives to write God’s law on our hearts – these are some of the thoughts that stand out in the various readings that are set for this Sunday. All of these ideas are related. When God comes into our lives, it is to save us, but a significant feature of God’s salvation is that God changes us so that we stop doing to ourselves and others what brings us into bondage and brokenness. This is why we need God’s law – God’s way of living – written on our hearts. It is only when we naturally and automatically live the Jesus way that we are truly able to bring life, love and liberation into our corner of the world. And, of course, one of the primary “tools” we use to ask God to come to us is prayer. When we pray persistently, we constantly open ourselves to encounter with God, and the result is that we are changed – we slowly begin to align our values, our goals, our attitudes and our behaviours with those of God’s Reign.
Ultimately prayer is not about the words we speak. It’s about bringing our entire lives under the Reign of God – which is how we pray without ceasing. When we move away from seeing prayer as a way to manipulate things according to our desires and embrace it as a way to change ourselves according to God’s desires, our prayers, and our lives, are filled with amazing power.
This week we explore what it means to be persistent in bringing our lives under God’s Reign and turning our whole lives into a prayer.
To download this week’s reflections in PDF format, click here.
