God can get through to us what God wants to get through, at any time. You can of course seem to close off from God, or turn away in disbelief, anger or despair. Yet if God wants to get your attention, God will. That being said, it is important to understand how God communicates with us during prayer, usually in subtle and unexpected ways.

There are seven essential entryways in us through which God may stealthily make God’s presence and will known during prayer. The better you understand these, the more readily your apparent prayer monologue can be grasped as an actual prayer dialogue, as a “with” rather than “to” God. It is vital to patiently wait upon, and listen for the Lord around these entryways. And also to take on faith that God addresses you daily, in a variety of elusive ways, though most importantly in prayer.

So what exactly is prayer? Prayer is communication with God in all its forms. This includes intimate as well as seemingly distant communication, from monologues to dialogues, from written texts to mystical touch, from speech to silent communion. Prayer establishes the bridge between God and humanity. It is as vital to your personal well-being to develop a flourishing prayer life, as it is to learn how to communicate love to human loved ones.

My purpose in these prayer podcasts is to teach you how to pray to God, so that you can actually come to sense the presence of God, the subtle but significant response of God to your prayer. What I will offer you are time tested ways of praying that will at some point bring you into direct connection with God. Everything is at stake in the long overdue return to the focus on knowing God directly. Such knowledge permeated the Bible and the medieval mystics. I want you to encounter the ultimate beauty, goodness and truth: God.

God has taught me a contemplative form of prayer which I practice every morning, and during brief periods throughout the day. I call it “Abiding Prayer,” and it is based Jesus’ directing us to: “Abide in me as I abide in you . . . Abide in my love” (John 15:4,9). Abiding prayer is less something you do, and more something you permit to happen. That means, Abiding Prayer is God’s prayer in and with you, built on Christ’s own insistent directive.

The focus of Abiding Prayer is on Christ and entering into a heart-to-heart mutual life with Christ during the prayer itself. Abiding Prayer offers a pathway toward attaining what Christ fervently prays for all disciples: “that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one” (John 17:22-23).

To know God is to love God. As God draws near, your heart, seemingly of itself, arises with love unspeakable in response. You do not have to think or decide to love God; God is love itself. Hence, the love arising in you as God becomes present to you, is also God arising in you.

French priest Saint John Vianney (1786-1859) understood this equation between God and love. For him, the meaning of life was to love God above all, in all, and through all. His prayer is beautiful and brings beauty to the soul of the person who prays it:

“I love You, O my God, and my only desire is to love You until the last breath of my life.

I love You, O my infinitely lovable God, and I would rather die loving You, than live without loving You. I love You, Lord and the only grace I ask is to love You eternally . . . My God, if my tongue cannot say in every moment that I love You, I want my heart to repeat it to You as often as I draw breath.”

Only God has the final word about your life. One extraordinary promise is that eventually, in God’s timing and terms, God will turn your tears into joy. This is what the peace of Jesus Christ is about: all will be more than well at the end. Psalm 126 expresses this hope:

“When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy; then it was said among the nations, ‘The LORD has done great things for them.’ The LORD has done great things for us, and we rejoiced. Restore our fortunes, O LORD, like the watercourses in the Negeb. May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy. Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves” (Ps 126:1-6).

I turned to God long ago in desperation. My entire being shivered at the realization that without God, there was no possible solid ground upon which to build my life. As an agnostic finally searching for God, God found me, literally restoring my life. Later, the first time I read these words of David, I was filled with gratefulness:

“I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the Lord” (Psalm 40:1-3).

That is just what God did for me, as God has done for countless others. And God can do so for you, if that is what you need.

One of the most significant and often repeated questions is, “Why pray?” What is the purpose of prayer? What are you supposed to get out of it? Here are four goals of prayer:

1. Self-discovery: What do you seek? How strongly do you seek it? How long have you sought it? You can learn a great deal about yourself by examining your history of prayers to God. Though God knows your thoughts and needs before you do (Psalm 139:4; Matthew 6:8), you still have to voice them. It is essential to your well-being to let your desires, your hopes as well as your fears, become word.

2. Self-transformation: “Thy will be done,” said Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane before His arrest and crucifixion (Matthew 26:42).

3. God-appeal: We cannot help but ask, even beg God for what we seek from God.

4. God-encounter: This is the most important “why” of prayer. Prayer is the essential means to open us to the gift of God’s presence.

If you could start each day by blessing God, as if giving thanks for the mere rising of the sun—something we mostly take for granted—you would likely discover sufficient reasons for blessing God. The joyous Psalm 103 is like a celebration of the rising of the sun. As you pray these words, let them generate the four questions: what does the passage say; what does it say to you; what do you want to say to God; and what does God want to say to you?

“Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the LORD, O my soul, and do not forget all his benefits— who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the Pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good as long as you live so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's” (verses 1-5).

The amazing truth is, giving thanks with your mouth generates thankfulness in your heart. Expressing gratitude blesses you with the feeling of gratitude. Bless the Lord and you will discover how much you really have to bless the Lord for. If you seem not be able to bless God for what you have, then bless God for what you do not have, that you do not want!