The intimacy of prayer

Nouwen on Prayers
“Prayer creates that openness in which God is given to us. Indeed, God wants to be admitted into the human heart, received with open hands, and loved with the same love with which we have been created.”

“Today I imagined my inner self as a place crowded with pins and needles. How could I receive anyone in my prayer when there is no place for them to be free and relaxed? When I am still so full of preoccupations, jealousies, angry feelings, anyone who enters will get hurt. I had a very vivid realization that I must create some free space in my innermost self so that I may indeed invite others to enter and be healed. To pray for others means to offer others a hospitable place where I can really listen to their needs and pains. Compassion, therefore, calls for a self-scrutiny that can lead to inner gentleness.”

“The Kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21), Jesus said. The prayer of the heart takes these words seriously. When we empty our minds from all thoughts and our hearts from all experiences, we can prepare in the center of our innermost being the home for the God who wants to dwell in us. Then we can say with St. Paul, “I live now not with my own life but with the life of Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). Then we can affirm Luther’s words, “Grace is the experience of being delivered from experience.” And then we can realize that it is not we who pray, but the Spirit of God who prays in us.”

Text excerpts taken from "You are the Beloved" by Henri J.M. Nouwen