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).

You may not laugh as you pray, or pray while you laugh, but prayer and laughter have some crucial elements in common. Both help to lift you out of a situation, or the feeling of being trapped by the circumstances of your life. That is, they offer you an immediate way of stepping back from, if not transcending your current conditions. Prayer and laughter free your inner being, even if it is only for a time.

Some of the best laughter I have been fortunate to share, has been with families at hospitals while awaiting the results of surgery, or worse, an expected approaching end of life for a loved one. It is not of course as if the circumstances were anything less than grave, or that they were laughing at its seriousness. Rather, the humor, just like prayer, gave them temporary relief, a brief lifting of burdens, a short forgetfulness, helping to re-balance their listing souls.

Augustine of Hippo (354-430), famously said: “Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore, seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.” And Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) added, “I do not seek to understand so that I can believe, but I believe so that I may understand; and what is more, I believe that unless I do believe, I shall not understand.”

It is as if belief opens up an inner treasure-trove of understanding impossible to attain without prior faith. The writer of the letter to the Hebrews said, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1 NKJV). And the Christian philosopher Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), wrote about the necessity of taking a “leap of faith,” with understanding coming after the faith-risk of leaping.

In the middle of his setting forth the gifts of the Holy Spirit, Paul turns to the highest gift of all: love. But not just any form of love; rather, the love which comes down from heaven. The Greek term for this love is “agape.” It appears almost exclusively in the New Testament in the Greek speaking world of this time. It refers to God’s own love, which we are first to seek receiving, and then to share it with others.

Perhaps the best analogy of agape love is that of pouring water from a large pitcher into an empty glass. If you do not stop pouring, the water will eventually overflow the glass. That is the point at which love becomes agape love: when you have received more love than you can take it, when your heart is overflowing. Like the best of all possible news, you will simply have to give it to and share it with others.

Many persons think that being a Christian is about what you have to give up, rather than what treasure you might receive. Yet the truth is, what may appear as a sacrifice from the outside, will in fact be anything but a sacrifice from the inside, for the persons making it. Does God seek sacrifice from us? Are we supposed to get rid of all our possessions, so that we may possess the kingdom of heaven, whatever and whenever that is? God says through the prophet Hosea that God desires “steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings” (Hos 6:6). Jesus slightly amends this, telling His listeners, “Go and learn what this means, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice’” (Matt 9:13).

God is not only our Father. God is also our Mother. God is in truth, our Single Parent. And we learn right away in Genesis 1:27 that both male and female are made equally in God’s image: “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” That means the one God functions as both our Mother and Father. Through Isaiah, God says:

“Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth; break forth, O mountains, into singing! For the LORD has comforted his people and will have compassion on his suffering ones. But Zion said, ‘The LORD has forsaken me, my Lord has forgotten me.’ Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands; your walls are continually before me . . . As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem” (Isa 49:13-16; 66:13).