The Pursuit of God

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The Pursuit of God

pray the Psalms. 7 We pray intercessory prayers, breath prayers, thanksgiving prayers, and many more. For most, contemplative prayer is not the first kind of prayer prayed when beginning to walk with Jesus. But as Jesus’s followers continue on the journey to increasing Christlikeness, there will eventually be a turn to contemplation—after all, contemplation is a central activity in heaven! 8 Why Contemplative Prayer? Contemplative prayer is a church practice aimed at helping disciples of Jesus consciously commune with God and rest in his love. Since the presence of God brings fullness of joy (Pss 16:11; 21:6; John 15:11), disciples ought to set their highest desires on abiding continually in the conscious presence of God (Ps 27:4; Luke 10:41–42). Philosopher J. P. Moreland identifies two purposes for contemplative prayer. First, it helps us “attach emotionally and intimately to our loving God—to love God with all our hearts, to seek God for his own sake, even if we do not experience something.” 9 Second, contemplative prayer helps us “transform our character by learning to center and calm ourselves, to focus without distraction on a member of the Trinity or on God in general . . . to see our anxiety depart and be replaced by peace and joy.” 10 Contemplative prayer involves “deep, fully focused openness to and 7 See Carmen Joy Imes, ed., Praying the Psalms with Augustine and Friends , Sacred Roots Spiritual Classics 1 (Upland, IN: Samuel Morris Publications, 2021). 8 For an overview of how this theme has looked across the last two thousand years, see Hans Boersma, Seeing God: The Beatific Vision in Christian Tradition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018). 9 J. P. Moreland, Finding Quiet: My Story of Overcoming Anxiety and the Practices that Brought Peace (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2019), 97. 10 Moreland, 97.