Dear Ones,
Our quest is simply to know God. This encounter with the living God is what we are hungry for. We have been created by God to need God and have been given an infinite capacity for Him. Our soul is the holy temple within us where Christ lives and where we meet the Divine. As we draw near to God in the hiddenness of prayer, He begins to reveal Himself to us. God is our destiny. We are His prayer, His thoughts. He is hopelessly lost in His love and longing for us. When the spark of our own longing is set aglow by a glimpse of such unspeakable longing, we are drawn toward His presence. As our longing intensifies, the Light brightens within us, thinning the veil. Our longing becomes our belonging—one with the longing of God.
Prayer is simply an offering of our hearts to God, for we truly have nothing more to give. Prayer is where it all begins, and I’m sure it is where it all ends. When we pray we descend into the depths of our being to be with Him in the silence and stillness—listening, waiting, and resting. Silence is the heart’s certainty of the captivating Presence of the Divine. It is a breathless quiet in which the Ineffable within us communes with the Ineffable beyond us. Prayer is an encounter with the living God. We engage with Him in friendship, in conversation, in thought, getting lost in mystery, wonder, love, and praise. In prayer, we are submitting and allowing this encounter with Love to change us.
As we look on Love, we are reshaped by Love into the likeness of Christ. He gazes His purity into us. Our part is to stop, turn; open ourselves to receive His loving gaze. The quest to become like Him can happen only when we are with Him. How could it happen any other way? It is the discipline of returning in quiet and stillness to simply be with Him in the deep silence, allowing His Light to pour into us, listening in silence to the whisperings of the Spirit that opens the possibility of our transformation. Gradually, our will is disciplined, our mind is stilled, our heart is surrendered, Spirit touches spirit, and thus we experience His Presence. These are the moments when we come face-to-face with God.
May our heart’s desire for God be intensified as we respond to the Love waiting within us, continually coming to Him in prayer. ~Betty
Excerpted from The Hidden Life Awakened pages 186-187