The quickest way to transform your relationship with God is stop talking to yourself, and simply direct your inner dialogue to God. All of it. Right or left turn. Chocolate or vanilla. Instantly, your life becomes a prayer with no extra effort. I began this several years ago and was amazed at how I transformed as a person, how deep I went, and how quickly. Others begin to notice, both the good ones and troubled, your love increases, your understanding of His love increases, and ability to withstand suffering increases dramatically. Try it. It’s so simple.
This will sound odd, but eventually you begin to feel as if your thoughts and your emotions are *united* with his. You’ll feel sorrow, joy, and anger in sometimes surprising ways. For me, I’m confrontational when I’d normally be, and more when I wouldn’t. Sadness for people who hurt.
You start to see Him in others more, and it’s harder to hate. There is righteous anger, too. One of the blessings also is that you can feel when these emotions are getting off track, notice that you’re not quite as united as last week, and realize it’s time for confession.
Anyway, I could go on for days about the desire to sacrifice, and how some things stop mattering. But, sadly, I’m not a priest. I’m just a man who was very worldly for a time who is astounded at how easily God can transform with this simple effortless step. End.
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The enemy knows this. He knows he can’t invade this type of prayer. The innermost thoughts of a child of God, being directed intentionally toward God. He’ll throw EVERYTHING at you when you begin. When that doesn’t work, he’ll distract. There’s so much noise in the world now ...
And, until you become very good at it, he’ll succeed now and then. But the beauty of it is that you won’t be doing it alone at that point. At a certain point, God begins to act on you. And He gives you what Theresa of Avila called “spiritual delights.” These types of encounters, whether it be a word packed with a library of meaning, or a glimpse of understanding of a mystery, the healing of a memory, or any number of things, these encounters with the divine give you an unshakeable confidence that God exists, and a burning desire ...
To know Him more. So, yeah, you’ll fail. But once you reach a certain point, there’s no turning back, because you know with supernatural confidence that life without unity with God is dross. So you pick yourself back up, and you talk to Him again. Seriously, try it.
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Kill your pride or it will kill you.
Your free will is yours. It’s one of the greatest gifts God has given you. He will never violate it.
You should give it back.Giving your free will back to God is a bit advanced, at least if it's going to be done with full comprehension. But it's something all mystics do, because it's necessary to enter into full unitive life with Him. To be done properly, it requires a massive level of introspection...
"What/who exactly am I prepared to lose?" "What am I prepared to change?" "What will He ask of me?" "Am I really prepared to say yes?" "What about future things?" "What may come?"
a perfect act of submission and letting go is what's required. Understanding that everyone you love, and everything you're attached to comes second to God. But, the primary underlying acknowledgment is what's most important, and that's this: Knowing that He only does what's best for us.
So, one has to be reasonably close to God before this can be done in a complete way, and one should expect heartache in various ways afterward. But when it is done consciously, fully, and completely, you'll go deeper and will change more (and faster) than you believed possible.
If you're hitting a wall, and haven't yet done this, it'll probably break you through ...
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I think this is is what "Abide in me, and I in you" means (John 15).
And what 1 Thess 5:17 means (“Pray without ceasing.”)
I was just looking at my sons and realizing I soak up everything they want to say to me and remembering when they were chatty babies who made no sense. Just googoo and Gaga. I couldn’t get enough.
The Father is the same way with every thought directed at Him. Even more so.
Try it.
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“The contemplative life tramples on all cares, and longs to see the face of its Creator.” St. Gregory the Great.
“As the soul grows in spirituality, the more it ceases from the operation of its faculties in particular acts, for it becomes more and more engaged in one act which is general and pure;” St. John of the Cross. Ascent, II, xii, 6.
“There are also the faintest breaths of God on the soul, whereby it knows it is drawn to something rather than to say it feels God’s presence.”
“But at other times the spirit of man experiences by ways he does not know, that God is present,and experiences this with an assurance he cannot prove but only know he has. Then he has known for those moments true contemplative prayer.” Dominic M. Hoffman, O.P., The Life Within.
Something I should add: I expected the audience of this thread to be primarily people who have been catechized. With joy, I see that it has a broader audience. That audience may not know that one must clear the way for The Lord to enter. I'll keep it very simple.
When you begin, simply, but sincerely and humbly, apologize to God for the sinful things you've done, promise not to do them again, and ask for the Grace to be able to accomplish that. If you're sincere, that's called repentance.
Do it as many times as you need to. The Father, the Son, the Spirit, and all the angels and saints in heaven will rejoice every single time you do, even if you have to do it 100x a day.
