A PERSONS FAITH GOES AT ITS OWN PACE Owen Meany said THE TROUBLE WITH CHURCH IS THE SERVICE. A SERVICE IS CONDUCTED FOR A MASS AUDIENCE. JUST WHEN I START TO LIKE THE HYMN EVERYONE PLOPS DOWN TO PRAY. JUST WHEN I START TO HEAR THE PRAYER EVERYONE POPS UP TO SING. AND WHAT DOES THE STUPID SERMON HAVE TO DO WITH GOD WHO KNOW WHAT GOD THINKS OF CURRENT EVENTS WHO CARES

When God will have any great matters done he sets his peoples hearts to work at prayer by a kind of gracious instinct. He stirs them up and moves their hearts by the influence of his Holy Spirit.

I just remembered a time when to warm up my spirit I prayed movement is spirit. Prayer was a means of mutely and hidden from others reaching myself. When I prayed I achieved an emptiness of soul - and that emptiness is all I can ever have. Besides that nothing. But the emptiness has the value and appearance of plenty. One way of getting is not looking one way of having is not asking and only believing that the silence I believe to be inside me is the answer to my - to my mystery.

Upon the lips of babes asleep I saw light embracing light and so allowed my syllables to rest there as a prayer they might sing in their dreams...

Through dreams God awakened me through prayers God directed me.

Pardon me also and deal mercifully with me as often as I think of anything besides You in prayer. For I confess truly that I am accustomed to be very much distracted. Very often I am not where bodily I stand or sit rather I am where my thoughts carry me. Where my thoughts are there am I and frequently my thoughts are where my love is. That which naturally delights or is by habit pleasing comes to me quickly. Hence You Who are Truth itself have plainly said For where your treasure is there is your heart also. If I love heaven I think willingly of heavenly things. If I love the world I rejoice at the happiness of the world and grieve at its troubles. If I love the flesh I often imagine things that are carnal. If I love the spirit I delight in thinking of spiritual matters. For whatever I love I am willing to speak and hear about.

Worry my son...I am not worried now and I never have or will. You must learn to tell worry from thought and thought from prayer. Sometimes a light will go from your life...and your life becomes a prayer till you are strong enough to stand under the weight of your own thought again.

But being overborne with numbers and nobody daring to face about stretching out his hands to heaven Romulus prayed to Jupiter to stop the army and not to neglect but maintain the Roman cause now in extreme danger. The prayer was no sooner made than shame and respect for their king checked many the fears of the fugitives changed suddenly into confidence.

He Lincoln recognized the delicate balance between immanence and transcendence refusing to settle for either of these alone. His was a God who was both in the world and above the world.

Gods fundamental goal for believers is not to protect us from harm or suffering to make us comfortable or to benefit from our service. You can biblically sum up Gods primary aim for your whole life in one uncomfortable word change. Ironic as it may sound change is the one constant that God purposes for every believer regardless of circumstances - whether you are in ministry or in a secular job married or single healthy or handicapped chronically ill or terminally diseased. Gods immediate and ongoing purpose for every Christian in time and on earth is to change us to make us like Himself to conform us to the image of His Son.