We are IN Him and He is IN us. He is closer to us than our next breath. He is our dwelling place. Our hiding place. Psalm 90:1 says, “Lord, YOU HAVE BEEN OUR DWELLING PLACE — throughout all generations.”
He is the location in which our spirits are connected 24/7 while the lifeblood from Him as the Vine pours into us as His branches (John 15). He is The Living Water which flows into the wells of our hearts.
Prayer is not telling Him how He should fulfil our needs: His thoughts, ways, and thus solutions, are far higher than our own. He already knows what we need before we even ask (Matthew 6:8). And even though His thoughts, ways and solutions are higher than our own, it doesn’t mean they are unavailable to us. They are constantly available through Jesus: “I am convinced that my God will fully satisfy every need you have, for I have seen the abundant riches of glory revealed to me THROUGH the Anointed One, JESUS CHRIST!” (Phil 4:19).
Richard Pratt says, “When prayer focuses on what we need, then we are bound to neglect the One we need. Prayer becomes a shopping list, not a gaze at God.”
“A gaze at God” (Pratt): Prayer is simply us gazing at, and having conversation with, The One we love — The One who knows us better than we know ourselves. It is us taking the limitations off and acknowledging that without Him we can do nothing, but that with Him we can do any of the impossible things available to us in His Kingdom. It is us turning into Him. Adoring Him. Honouring Him. Acknowledging Him. I can garden and be in this heart space. I can work and be in this heart space. I can meet up with friends and occupy this heart space of constant communion. It never has to be severed or silenced.
I love How Jesus told the disciples how to pray:
“Acknowledge your Heavenly Father — Who He Is; His Kingdom First and HIS WILL be done here in the earthly realm as it is done in the third Heaven realm where our Father already is; we receive our daily bread who is Jesus… He is our constant feast; and we don’t walk into temptation because Jesus is not there — we walk in tandem with our Shepherd wherever He leads; His is the Kingdom, the power and the glory unendingly and eternally.”
Obviously I reworded the above, but I think there is so much muscle memory around that passage that we can tend to rattle it off as a religious response or a formula. It is neither. It’s a blueprint that reveals the amazing living relationship we have in Him. We acknowledge WHO He is, Whose we are, and step into the partnership that exists between earth and His Kingdom.
When the veil tore, ceremony got replaced with direct relationship. We can walk in the freedom and freshness of that direct relationship and be in constant communion (prayer) with Him. Creation already has revelation surrounding this: the rocks cry out (Luke 19:40), the mountains sing (Isaiah 55:12), the rivers clap their hands (Psalm 98:7), the earth groans (Romans 8:22). And Father God? He is already singing over us (Zeph 3).
We are already connected into Him through Jesus, who is the door. He is our great High Priest and our intercessor. Our invitation is: do we join in with the revelations, sounds and songs of Heaven? Do we dare to acknowledge that (as one of my friends used to say) “God is big and He knows stuff?”
Gazing into Him, taking our limitations off and partnering with Him in heart-to-heart communion… this is prayer.
