September 2007 E-News: Contemplative Prayer

September 2007  |  Issues IX

• Putts for Purity Golf Tournament

• Purity Spotlight: Contemplative Prayer by Lee Sherry

• Resource Spotlight: Samson & The Pirate Monks

• Real Answers to Real Questions

Only 5 weeks left!  Deadline to register is Oct. 5th.

Putts for Purity is the new (yet 'annual') golf tournament fundraiser for Be Broken Ministries.  This year's tournament will raise money for our Teen & Parent outreaches.  Our goal is to provide 100 families with one full year of Internet protection through SafeEyes free of charge, and also to offer 100 young people (ages 15-25) a 1/2 off discount on the PureOnline workshop.

Whether you play golf or not, you can be involved in this exciting fundraiser to help protect children online and provide quality biblical tools for helping those who have already dabbled in the dangers of porn.

Tournament Date: October 13, 2007

Time of Event: 8:00 am

Golf Course: Olympia Hills

Cost: $75 for single player  |  $280 for group (foursome)

Note: You do not have to live in San Antonio (or even Texas) to participate in this fundraiser.  And you don't have to be a golfer to get involved - you can donate directly toward the cause.

Learn more about the Putts for Purity Golf Tournament

Contemplative Prayer
Increasing our conscious contact with God through contemplative prayer

by Lee Sherry

Reproduced with permission of AffairRecovery.com

When I was invited to write this column, I was a little bit intimidated about where to begin. Saints have written volumes about contemplative prayer. My wife can certainly tell you that I am no saint. But St. Augustine’s words, “My soul is restless until it rests in You O God,” penetrate to the deep passion of my heart. Prayer is a movement of response to our Creator who loves us and pursues us like the hounds of heaven. God is the consummate lover who wants to be in an intimate relationship with us as His created beings.

Contemplative prayer has been revolutionary in my search for God, my struggle to discover the fullness of Love, and my yearning for the complete truth. In contemplative prayer, I have been given a taste of God, of Love, and of Truth.

I came to faith during my teen years. My paternal grandmother was a Christian who had a strong influence on me having a heart to seek God. She mirrored God’s unconditional love to me in a visible and palpable way, which gave me hope that I wasn’t alone in the fragmented dysfunctional house where I grew up.

Grandma was a Protestant, so I followed that tradition. While I served in the Navy, I was introduced to a Christian group who discipled me in the disciplines of prayer, Bible study, scripture memory, and fellowship. I remember reading Robert D. Foster’s Seven Minutes with God as a guide on how to plan a daily quiet time. The prayer time suggested was 2.5 minutes and the format suggested was: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication.

At that point in my spiritual journey, my concept of God vacillated between two extremes. At one extreme, I perceived Him as a remote benevolent monarch roaming around the universe who would punish me quickly for the slightest infraction. On the other side of the spectrum, I had a warped thought – maybe He was kind of like a celestial slot machine (a big sugar daddy) and if I could find the right formula, life would be rosy.

So my 2 ½ minute daily prayer life followed the pattern above, but mostly I really thought prayer was all about bringing a grocery list of requests to God. I was not living a faith-based prayer life.

In 1994 my world crashed. God used a series of circumstances to bring me face to face with Him. He left me no doubt that He is real, and has called me to be in a relationship with Him. To be in a relationship with God is something more incredible than marriage and marriage is a Holy Covenant. I can imagine if I would spend 2 ½ minutes a day with my wife, there wouldn’t be much intimacy. Yet the Creator of the whole universe who loved us even before He called us into being – even before He implanted us into our mother’s womb – and who loves us for eternity, knocks on the door of our heart quietly for us to invite Him in. That’s pretty incredible. I love being with my wife. I can assure you that I spend more than 2 ½ minutes a day with her. I can’t wait to spend time with her, and we’ve been married 32 years.

While God pursues us, He is the perfect gentleman. He patiently waits. He does not barge into our lives. He created us with a free will and He will not violate our free will. The choice is ours. Do we want to accept His invitation to be in relationship with Him?

Moving away from my “grocery list litany” style of praying and into a contemplative approach of fellowship with God was catapulted by an incredible little book which is one of the greatest pieces of Christian literature of all time entitled Practicing His Presence by Brother Lawrence and Frank Laubach. These two men in church history have written very practically and simply on the subject of the practice of the presence of Christ. Brother Lawrence lived in the 17th Century, and Frank Laubach lived in the 20th Century, but their writing is a testimony that the reality of walking almost continually in the awareness of the presence of Christ is possible. It is in the presence of Christ that I myself discovered the healing of my fragmented soul.

Off the top of my head there are many incredible writers on contemplative prayer who have helped me in my journey. I strongly recommend Henri Nouwen, Thomas Merton, and Francis Keating for starters.

I’ve been aware of God’s pursuit since I came to faith in my teen years, but my response was sort of an approach-avoidance posture. How can you really get to know someone if you don’t spend any time with that person? Seven minutes with God may have been fine during my infant years of spiritual development, but God doesn’t want us to be infants all our lives. For me personally, the shift in my head began when I read in Luke chapter 11 about one morning when, in response to Jesus’ disciples' request that He teach them to pray, Jesus gave them a format. I noted that the disciples didn’t ask Jesus how to pray. They said, “Lord, teach us to pray.” Up to that point in their spiritual journey, they had watched Jesus pray to the Father, but their minds had not comprehended that Jesus was actually God enfleshed in their midst.

I began to pray following The Lord’s Prayer, and making it very personal. Below is an example of how I began to pray. This type of prayer revolutionized my concept of God and moved me out of the “grocery list” mode into the very Presence of God:

Click here for the complete article...

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Real Question:

What does the Bible say about how far a man and a woman can go sexually before they get married?

Real Answer:

What a GREAT question. The way your question is worded, however, is an issue that is not actually addressed in the Bible. In other words, there are no passages that say, "X, Y, and Z are OK sexual activities before marriage." But there are some directives that were given in the Old Testament Law concerning the value of a woman's virginity. In fact, if a man violated a woman's virginity he had to pay her Dad or, in some cases, both of them were stoned to death! (Praise God for New Testament grace through Jesus, right?!)

The point is that God is not interested in instructing us on "how close we can get" to sin without actually sinning. His intent for our lives is to reflect His character and glory through a deepening relationship with Him through Christ. Therefore, in your interaction with the opposite sex think of how far you can walk away from the edge of the "sexual cliff" rather than how close you can get without falling over.

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Do you have a real question you need answered? If so, email it to us at questions@bebroken.com.

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