Quiet Prayer E-Book

Marie Chapian

• Herausgeber: BroadStreet Publishing Group, LLC
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 172

Beschreibung

Gods peace is waiting for you. Many women long for God's presence in their lives. Although they try to find time for God, they still find themselves distracted by a busy world and even busier minds. Based on an ancient and biblical Christian practice, Quiet Prayer meditation reveals how the power of Jesus-centered silence suppresses distractions, igniting your prayer time and revitalizing your relationship with God. Quiet Prayer will help you - learn the history and importance of Christian meditation, - develop the daily practice of Quiet Prayer through thirty-one guided meditations, - increase your awareness of God and yourself, and - see God's living love and power move in your life.Begin your journey of embracing God's transformative peace through Quiet Prayer.

Leseprobe

BroadStreet Publishing® Group, LLC

Savage, Minnesota, USA

BroadStreetPublishing.com

Quiet Prayer: 31 Days of Meditation for Women

Copyright © 2022 Marie Chapian

978-1-4245-6420-0 (faux leather)

978-1-4245-6421-7 (e-book)

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, New International Version® NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked ESV are taken from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked AMP are taken from the Amplified® Bible (AMP). Copyright © 2015 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. www.Lockman.org. Scripture quotations marked GW are taken from GOD’S WORD®, copyright © 1995 God’s Word to the Nations. Used by permission of God’s Word Mission Society. Scripture quotations marked NIrV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Reader’s Version®, NIrV® Copyright © 1995, 1996, 1998, 2014 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The “NIrV” and “New International Reader’s Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

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22 23 24 25 26 5 4 3 2 1

In honor of the many contemplative Christian women of prayer through the ages whose kerchiefs I am unfit to touch.

You have placed your truth in the inner being; therefore, teach me the wisdom of the heart.

Forgive all that binds me in fear, that I might radiate love; cleanse me that your light might shine in me. Fill me with gladness; help me to transform weakness into strength… Create in me a clean heart, O Gracious One, and put a new and right spirit within me.

PSALM 511

“Prayer is nothing else than being on terms of friendship with God.”

ST. TERESA OF ÁVILA (1515–1582)2

She found herself at a loss for words in prayer and called it Quiet Prayer…

CONTENTS

Introduction

The Foundations of Quiet Prayer

The History of Christian Meditation

Quiet Prayer Is Freedom

What Is Quiet Prayer Meditation?

Contemplation and Meditation

Prepare for Your Meditation

The Process

The Practice of Quiet Prayer

Meditation 1: Your True and False Self

Meditation 2: Getting to Know Your True Self

Meditation 3: The Core of Wordlessness

Meditation 4: How the True Self Wins

Meditation 5: The Workings of Your Soul

Meditation 6: Can We Talk to Our Souls?

Your Amazing Brain

Meditation 7: How Hard Can It Be?

Meditation 8: The Hungry Woman

Meditation 9: Breath Meditation

Meditation 10: Living Right Now

Meditation 11: Love that Heals

Because I Love God

Meditation 12: Mercy Is a Person

Meditation 13: Friendship with God

Meditation 14: A Cozy Place

God in the Mirror

Meditation 15: The Open Mind

Meditation 16: God’s Vast Museum

Meditation 17: The Light You Carry

Meditation 18: When Letting Go Doesn’t Work

Meditation 19: Living with Pain

Meditation 20: Persistence

Meditation 21: Compassion

Meditation 22: Success and Failure

Eight Ways to Build Commitment to Your Quiet Prayer Practice

Meditation 23: Angels Watching over You

Meditation 24: All of You

Meditation 25: Like a Little Child

Meditation 26: The Beauty of Beauty

Meditation 27: Yes

Meditation 28: A Deeper Yes

Meditation 29: The Transforming Factor

Meditation 30: Morning

Meditation 31: The Kingdom of God Here and Now

Appendix: Some Benefits of Quiet Prayer Meditation

Ackowledgments

About the Author

Other Books by Marie Chapian

Endnotes

INTRODUCTION

We’re instinctively drawn to the pleasant things in life. We seek comfort and security, and we rightfully desire to be loved and to love. Because you have this book in your hands, it shows you’re interested in knowing more about Christian meditation in the form of Quiet Prayer and how it can help you attain the life you were born to live.

With the world as it is today and the separation from each other politically, spiritually, and socially, we women must take our place as lights on the hills of turmoil. These thirty-one Quiet Prayer meditations are written to guide us as women on the road to the peace of God that is only to be found in the deep crevasses of our still hearts.

The name Quiet Prayer is inspired by the words of St. Teresa of Ávila, who said, “Prayer is nothing else than being on terms of friendship with God.”3 She found herself at a loss for words in prayer and called it Quiet Prayer.

Quiet Prayer meditation differs from other ancient and modern traditions as its practice is specifically focused on God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Quiet Prayer meditators tell me the moments spent in their Quiet Prayer daily practice are the best moments of the day, and I thank and praise the Lord every time a woman (or man) tells me she can’t imagine life without her Quiet Prayer meditation practice.

I’ve devoted myself to researching the history of Christian meditation, including the lives of the desert ammas (mothers) and abbas (fathers) of the first century who fled Jerusalem to live lives of meditation and solitude with God. Something I find most interesting in my research is that the Christian women of antiquity were powerful leaders and teachers of the Scriptures and the set-apart life of faith in Christ. Like the prophetess, Deborah, in Judges 4–5, there were anointed female leaders inspiring and teaching both men and women. I revere these women as fearless servants of God.

Christian women of God through the centuries lived lives of solitude and meditation, daring to go beyond themselves to enter the invisible walls of heaven and bring back for us tangible glimpses of eternity on earth. You, too, have a courageous life’s foundation as a woman of God.

We’re familiar with Solomon’s admonition in Proverbs 3:5–6: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.” I share Solomon’s admonition with you because Solomon’s words are the very foundation of Quiet Prayer meditation. I ask, What does it mean not to lean on our own understanding? Understanding is an act that takes place in our minds; therefore, understanding fits into the scope of thought. Leaning on our own understanding is to be led by, dominated by, and propped up by our own thoughts, ideas, opinions, tastes, prejudices, fears, and even goals and dreams.

We crush our trust in the Lord by the way we think and what we think about. It’s a problem when we believe what we think with God’s thoughts far from us. There is no other way on earth to submit all our ways to God without learning how to acknowledge and quiet our reckless minds. The pages of this book offer you a lifelong journey of Quiet Prayer meditation to ignite your inner life with the fire of fresh awareness of the presence of God and exquisite release from the prison of yourself. As John wrote in the gospel of John 3:30, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” These readings and meditations in your hands now are a loving arm to help bring you to your true self and the place of inner peace you were born to possess.

We Christian women can be drawn into despairing periods led by fear, especially based on what’s going on around us in today’s world. In a nutshell, we’re leaning on our own understanding. Fear teaches us nothing but more fear. Fear can become like mother and father, and we’re caught by the ribbons in our hair, helpless as babies. To be submitted to God in all my ways is to accept God in all his ways. If my feelings, thoughts, and opinions get in the way of divine connection with God, I’m back in the tarnished grip of my own understanding or my useless, frantic thoughts.

In stillness, God opens my eyes to more self-awareness as well as more God-awareness. Through my consent to stillness, he reaches into my spirit with his Holy Spirit and does a work in me that’s difficult to accomplish when I’m preoccupied with my inner chatter, my rushing about busy at this and busy at that with no time for stillness with him. As a woman, it’s exhausting and also tiresome to continually be wrestling with my thought life and tumbling through slippery gates of inner chaos. I think you’ve been there too. It’s the place where our lower selves hurl up the age-old, unanswerable expression, “Why me?”

There is an answer. In Quiet Prayer, we’re awakened to go beyond our feelings, thoughts, opinions, doubts, and fears. This book isn’t a guide in positive thinking or a handbook on emptying your thoughts (impossible to do). This book brings you some of the basics of Christian meditation as a means of igniting your awareness of the wordless power of love. The readings preceding the thirty-one meditations are to prepare you for entering the guided meditation and sitting in silence in your own personal Quiet Prayer. I’ll help guide you into the beauty of sitting still for twenty minutes at a time focused on Jesus. I advise you to take your time and read slowly. These gently guided Quiet Prayer meditations are yours to follow again and again. (That’s why it’s called a practice.) You’re on God’s journey along the straight path of ever enlarging inner peace.

God’s Spirit melds with yours, and in the ineffable glory of his presence, your dedicated daily practice develops in you a greater measure of perfect love. Slowly the many burdens, problems, worries, and concerns that have saturated your mind begin to diminish. Silence, as the expression goes, is golden, but in Quiet Prayer, it’s your acceptance, consent, and delight in the silence of God that’s golden.

I consider Quiet Prayer meditation an incredible privilege of transforming power to both women and men. We sit in silence with who we are, with all our deficiencies and weaknesses, and he sits with us as who he is, in all his majesty, power, mercy, and eternal love. In this place his gleaming straight path opens before us.

THE FOUNDATIONS OF QUIET PRAYER

THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN MEDITATION

That which is has already been,

And what is to be has already been;

And God requires an account of what is past.

ECCLESIASTES 3:15 NKJV

Quiet Prayer meditation is but one of thousands of meditation practices throughout the world. However, Quiet Prayer differs in that it is a Christian meditation practice centered on Jesus.

The early Christians were Jews who met to study the gospel and pray in synagogues. They then met in homes despite unspeakable persecution by Nero in AD 64. The actual first church building probably did not appear until the early 200s.

Following the death of Christ, many men and women who were his first followers fled to desert and mountain areas of Palestine and lower Egypt to live lives of prayer and meditation. They burrowed out dwellings in the rocks and mud banks of the rugged mountains and desert sand and lived with bare necessities. But the communities they formed there flourished in good health and happy hearts for over two hundred years. They were the first Christian contemplatives. They followed Christ’s admonition to find a set-apart place to pray in solitude. The desert mothers and fathers paved the way for modern contemplative life as the first Christians dedicated to prayer and meditation.

Their lives were rich with the joy of the Lord. They wore clothes fashioned from old coats and scraps from their past lives, grew their own food, sewed their clothes, and slept on straw mats on the dirt floors.

Their food was simple, anything they could grow in their little gardens, which they gladly shared with the other hermits who lived in nearby caves and hermitages. They lived apart from one another in solitude to pray and meditate every day of the week except the Sabbath, when they met to sing songs, share food, dance unto the Lord, and relish one another’s company.

Meditation was these early Christians’ contentment. They believed meditation and prayer were the only path to the secret and peaceful inflow of God’s love for his human creation. They believed that this love heals and restores the human heart. Without theologians and church culture, without denominational division and experts telling them how it all works, they flourished. These early Christians prospered with the same emotional and physical benefits of meditation that God offers us today.

We can join these early Christian contemplatives, not as hermits but as souls hungering for daily growth and a deeper relationship with God. They believed closeness with God, contemplation, and meditation to be the best life. More and more men and women chose the monastic life and dedicated themselves to asceticism and leading lives of prayer within the walls of monasteries and convents. For centuries, the practice of Christian meditation remained behind those walls, and the laity wasn’t taught or guided in the divinely blessed practice for over eight hundred years because only the priests, monks, and nuns practiced it.

In the 1970s, a group of seven Benedictine monks led by Father Thomas Keating met to bring the practice of Christian meditation and contemplation to the church’s laity. They called it Centering Prayer, a movement which began largely in Catholic and Anglican faith communities. Quiet Prayer is derived from Father Thomas Keating’s Centering Prayer, and I am deeply indebted to him and to Centering Prayer, to which I remain committed. Father Keating gave me his blessing and encouraged me to go forward with writing and guiding people in Quiet Prayer.

Quiet Prayer meditation places its focus on God himself. St. Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582) described this type of contemplative prayer this way: “Contemplative prayer in my opinion is nothing else than a close sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with him who we know loves us.”4

I’m a pilgrim on this inner journey with Jesus. I came to discover meditation without much of a background in any form of meditation. In the Protestant churches I attended, it was never suggested we just sit and be still in the presence of God for an hour or even for longer than a few minutes. These churches weren’t known for being particularly quiet in prayer or in worship, and the idea of meditation, if ever mentioned, would be open for anyone’s interpretation. It could be anything from dreaming of Elysian Fields while listening to soothing music or snoozing to a sermon. We simply didn’t understand what true Christian meditation was all about, and we weren’t sure of its true biblical purpose. Wasn’t it called meditation to study and memorize Scripture? Or was meditation what monks and nuns had practiced centuries ago in their cloistered monastic cells? While it may have been that way at one time, it is not that way for us today.

Quiet Prayer Christian meditation is not an escape from the troubles of life and the world. The heart and soul of Quiet Prayer meditation is, first, to help you come to a place of inner wisdom and peace so that, second, you are able to better handle the trials of self, life, and the world with a renewed mind and higher plane of spiritual awareness, power, and strength through Jesus Christ. It is emotional wisdom. Quiet Prayer helps guide you into awareness of yourself, who you are as your true self, and who God is in you. You become more spiritually open and gain the lifetime practice of knowing God in silence. You become more fully aware of living in the present time with more awareness of God in the world. A great spiritual work is done in your spirit, soul, and body without words. You learn the immense joy in being still without interrupting God’s work in you. You learn to focus on God and quiet your zillion busy thoughts.

The more time, weeks, months, and years you give to your practice of Quiet Prayer, the more confident you become in the spiritual work being done in you by Jesus. You’re being renewed by God’s Spirit moving in you. This renewal and eventual transformation takes place in silence. You aren’t “waiting on God” in these moments of silence; you are sitting with Jesus without words. You and Jesus alone bring to him your gifts of silence and obedience.

It’s important to know that Quiet Prayer doesn’t take the place of other forms of prayer; it’s a practice alongside intercession, praise, worship, and your other forms of prayer.

QUIET PRAYER IS FREEDOM

Be still, and know that I am God.

PSALM 46:10

He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters.

PSALM 23:2

I remember, in the beginning days of my Quiet Prayer practice, I sat cross-legged on my exercise mat for half-hour and one-hour periods. I had had knee surgery a few years previous, and it never bothered me until now. The floor was hard, and the room was cold, and after about fifteen minutes, my concentration went out the window. My knee hurt, but I wanted to stay put like everyone else. I would open one eye to peek at the timer to see how many minutes we had left, and it was always too long. I was just learning about Christian meditation, so it was all new to me. I thought I was building discipline to sit there in pain. Besides, nobody else in the group I sat with moved. I chuckle now at the memory of myself trying so hard to please the Lord and fit in with the group. All I had to do was uncross my legs and sit in an upright comfortable position.

At that time, I approached Quiet Prayer like a job to do well. I wanted to be good at it, and I wanted to do it right, master it. I used the same effort it would take at the gym starting a new workout program. Hard work, discipline, “pain is gain” thinking.

Of course, that wasn’t a fitting approach. Quiet Prayer is a spiritual practice. Simply put, in one way, it’s the daily experience of freeing yourself from yourself. I certainly wasn’t freeing myself with all that unnecessary and distracting pain. It was all about me, and I missed the whole purpose of Quiet Prayer. I had a lot to learn about myself and about judging. At the gym I may be self-conscious about wanting to do well at my workout, and at the same time, I can observe how well the other ladies are doing. I judge myself. I judge them. It’s good if I do more reps than last time. It’s bad if I don’t. It’s good if I can keep up with the lady next to me. It’s bad if I can’t. I’m a better person than the rest of the class because I work harder. Ouch.

Quiet Prayer helps free us from competition and judgment. You are not performing a skill when you meditate. Say goodbye to the gym mentality in meditation. Nobody is better or worse at it than you; there is no good, bad, right, wrong—no. In Quiet Prayer, you say goodbye to self-consciousness.

SAY GOODBYE EXERCISE

·I say goodbye to self-consciousness.

·I say goodbye to competing with other women.

·I say goodbye to the unnecessary pressure I put on myself to do well.

·I’m free to hear the voice of the Lord above mine.

·I say goodbye to the mistaken idea that the spiritual life is hard.

·I say goodbye to trying to change others.

·I open my heart and soul to the sweet, compassionate heart of God.

WHAT IS QUIET PRAYER MEDITATION?

I have calmed and quieted myself,

I am like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child I am content.

PSALM 131:2