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Discussion Forum : Scriptures and Doctrine : contemplative prayer

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knitefall
Member



Joined: 2010/3/2
Posts: 253


 contemplative prayer

Thoughts on contemplative prayer?

 2010/3/27 23:49Profile
poet
Member



Joined: 2007/2/16
Posts: 231
Longview WA

 Re: contemplative prayer

Sure,
where to start?, It would depend on what people mean by contemplative prayer, some mean to relax and try and listen.
Nothing wrong with praying and listening to the Lord.
My problem with contemplative prayer is that it resembles
T.M. "transidental Meditation" the purpose of causing your mind to go into an altered state of consciousness, and in this altered state we can either experience god or hear him.
This method has been practiced by the desert fathers, promoted in a book called the "cloud of unknowing" author unknown.
It is practiced by New Age believers, who speak to spirit guides while in this state.
As I mentioned T.M. before this is a Hindu practice and they get an experience, called a Kundalini awakening.
I met a christian who practices this prayer practice and also has had a kundalini awakening, but some of his storys concerning the voices he has heard are very disturbing.
It is also an occult technique to hear from their own source of power.
Richard Foster, by his own admission in his book, "Prayer finding the hearts true home" he admits in the chapter on contemplative prayer, that prayer technique is dangerous for novice's because in the spirit realm not all spirits are in total agreement with God... Red flags there I think.
People will argue with me and some very veminately.
But prayer according to the bible, is asking, seeking, knocking. bringing our petitions before God who knows what we need before we ask. Prayer is talking to God, interceding for others, praising Him, and thanking him.
Never clearing our minds of thoughts, driving them out, like contemplative prayer dictates/.
" I will enter his gates with thanksgiving, I will enter his courts with praise"
Thanks giving means "thinkfullness" thinkfullness is thankfullness, God wants us to use our minds not clear them like other pagan religions.
It is not reciting a scripture over and over and over, or saying a word over and over and over to bring our minds into an alpha state to hear a voice, or hear God,a god.
Or to get a spirit quide, or to experience the god within.
which many claim, new age or who ever.
Experiences can be deceiving, we need to trust in the word of God.
there are a ton of resources that discribe the dangers of contemplative prayer, just google them.
and some great radio interviews from people who have been rescured from the mystical practice.
1cor 14:15 what is the conclusion then? I will pray with the spirit and I will also pray with the understanding.

"praying in the spirit here means in tongues, and with understanding means with the mind" neither has to do with contemplative prayer which entails the clearing of the mind to have an expereince with god, or hear voices.

hope this helps.


_________________
howard

 2010/3/28 2:05Profile
knitefall
Member



Joined: 2010/3/2
Posts: 253


 Re:

Poet, This will hopefully go to helping someone caught up in a sort of T.M. Of coarse this person sees nothing wrong with it. I cannot make them see, all I can do is present the information and let God do the Works He does. Thanks!

Brother Shawn.

 2010/3/28 10:55Profile









 Re: Babylon the great ....prayer and praise.



"Contemplative Prayer" is simply the methodology to attain spiritual insight and power following the most ancient and widespread of them all; the mysteries of Satan worship and his loyal angels, described as Babylonian...stemming from Babel and Nimrod...the first satanic "Caesar" of the Earth.


This wicked system had several capitols throughout time, and as the winds of power shifted, settled in Rome. Demons, along with Caesar , were openly worshipped. Every major city had it's Patron Demon, whom the citizens worshipped, calling them god.


After Christianity began it's ascendancy, by the hand of the Lord, in the third century or so after the Resurrection of Jesus, Rome, and Satan, adapted another strategy. It baptized all of it's prophets of the BAALS [demon gods..] in a small stream outside the gates of Rome, and declared itself Christian....AS IT DOES YET TODAY!


The methods and doctrines of this "universal" [thereby the name Catholic..], changed only by symbols and titles. The objects of praise and worship are exactly the same as they have always been. They, by necessity, though, had to change the Names of the demons they worshipped. Astarte, "THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN!" became the virgin Mary..[ holy and sinless and ascended one...], and the various and ancient devils that ruled over regions were given the names of "saints".


The priest's ways to gain more evil power through the occult practices of clearing the mind, guided imagery and singular focus and mantra use was then called prayer...."meditative Prayer" to keep it Christian.


It is precisely and exactly the twin sister of it's unsullied counterpart in Hindi India today..[ where they never were required to mask their true worship..]


In English, it is called "Transcendental Meditation". You can really transcend this plane of consciousness...it is real. The problem being, that without Jesus, and His cleansing Blood, you will encounter the consciousness of malevolent beings...who hate God, and His Christ.


Babylon the great, did, and does worship Satan,and his order... the princes of darkness.

 2010/3/28 11:35









 Re: contemplative prayer

Contemplative prayer is not found in the scriptures.
If that is not enough of a warning sign, what can top it?

If you look up the greek word for prayer, more often than not, you find it is the word WORSHIP.

Nobody but nobody can worship God by emptying their mind, or doing nothing for that matter. Worship involves serving in humble obedience, praising the recipient for their attributes, and thank for being priveledged enough to serve. It is the bowing down of yourself in word and deed.

So many think of prayer as petition alone, however, it has been found to be a two way street of communication.

Waiting on God has been musunderstood to mean just sitting there and waiting, however, it is comparable to being a waiter in service to somebody dining. This entails hospitality: honoring God as greater than yourself, in such a way, that anything He desires is gratified to the best of your ability sparing no expense in achieving it. (Like Abraham in Genesis 18 - This experience was a living breathing prayer. Some say he was meditating at the onset of this experience, but how well does one meditate after B'rit Milah (circumcision)? As well in regard to the Hebrew mindset, if any think of this as some sort of mysticism, they do not understand the way of the -(most all of whom are all about tradition)- Hebrew:
( They say you must always be found doing,
whether awake or asleep, or purpose is without fruit.
This is and has been the prevailing way since Abraham,
or so they say.
[ONE EXCEPTION:The Hassidim -(one sect of the
Parushim ->aka:pharisee)- advocate allowance
for seeking after "the vision of God" in
affiliation with attaining to prophecy and
promote a similar technique. Still, they
employ methods to keep the mind focused
on the end result, avoiding any 'clearing
of the mind' completely.
Historically, what good has come from it???] )

The difference with God and any other entity, is that God shares with you. He gives you the benefit of worship in service to Him. He is so generous though, that in offering your self up to him, he leaves you better off than when you began.

What tangible results does contemplative prayer provide?
Is it any better than meditating over scripture? Ps. 1:2-3

Give yourself to Him and he benefits you more than you can recieve in return.

Rev. 3:20-21

Prayer is not folding your hands and saying your desires to God. Though there are many times withdrawal from the regular activities to get alone with God is normal, emptying your mind is not.

Prayer is living and talking with God. He want you to communicate with Him the way he created you: fully functioning.

He is not some nebulus force waiting to be tapped into.
There is no place you can go that He is not present.

Correct me if this is wrong:
Contemplative prayer seems to be a method of causing your consciousness to receed from the world about you and going into yourself?
If this is the case, according to the scriptures, this is not prayer at all. It is all about you and if there is anything about God, it is secondary.

You may recieve insight, however, where does that insight come from?
Your heart?
Your flesh?
A Daemon?
An angel of light's sermon recalled?
Your imagination?
A noise outside your window?
...and who knows what direction consciousness will flow from there?

When one blanks out rationale, one becomes open to any number of possible influences. The bar of intuition has no dictate for or against what is admitted into consciousness.

It might be a good way to become some new age neo-pagan fluff bunny, but the fruits of this activity seem quite worthless.

A sensible sheeple will not pay money for nothing, yet these contemplatives spend alot of time "doing nothing?" to achieve what?

Nothing from nothing leaves nothing.

What kind of prayer is effective?
Jas. 5:15
Jas. 5:16
Lk. 18:7

Where in the Bible does it say that to pray, you contemplate?

CIAO!

 2010/4/2 21:20
Giggles
Member



Joined: 2009/12/12
Posts: 592


 Re:

Tozer was big on it for what that's worth. He was totally a mystic in practice and very well read in the classic mystical authors, including those mentioned in this thread.

I think he practiced an active contemplative prayer where he would meditate on an attribute of God, like His holiness, for hours without speaking. Kinda like silent worship not just emptying the mind for the sake of it.


_________________
Paul

 2010/4/2 21:59Profile
DesertRose
Member



Joined: 2007/8/8
Posts: 123
Boston.MA

 Re: contemplative prayer

The following articles are by Don Whitney on mysticism and contemplative prayer.

The boundaries of Evangelical spirituality are the written self-revelation of God. Thus Evangelicals should also recognize that the boundaries of their spirituality specifically include the biblical doctrines of sola scriptura and sola fide.


http://www.biblicalspirituality.org/devotion.html

http://www.biblicalspirituality.org/def.html

 2010/4/2 23:12Profile









 Re:

For what it's worth, there are many things an elder/pastor friend of mine quotes from Tozer ...and you may find him without his bible, but never without one of Tozer's books.

He does not argue with what is shown him from the scriptures that Tozer contradicts, (that usually he quipts with qoutes from him), however, simply from all the ludicrous qoutes heard said, i have yet to bother picking up one of his books. Perhaps this brothers quotes are out of context???

Isn't God grand?

One can be nuttier than a fruitcake, and leave a worse taste in your mouth, and yet, He calls and chooses such?

He says i am too radical.

i say i'll pray for him.

He laughs.

We go our seperate ways til we cross paths again.

When we meet again, we talk about what God is doing with us in relationship and through us in service to Him.

WE are both coming around so to speak. Yet, he will not go with me to minister if i am called upon.

(i am a layman, and not certified or studied within the confines of a seminary...but, amazingly, God still uses me.)

Mysticism is not following Jesus example.
I'll stick with Jesus til' he shows me differently.

If what you say he practiced is what Tozer did, i hope for the sake of all who read his texts, that it was based on following scripture passages in 'contemplation'. If this is the case, i would not call it contemplative so much as meditation in the scripture.

CIAO!

 2010/4/3 10:47









 Re:

Thank you Dessert Rose.
It will be checked into.

Jn. 15:4

 2010/4/3 10:52
ChrisJD
Member



Joined: 2006/2/11
Posts: 2895
Philadelphia PA

 Re:

"Then they that feared the LORD spake often one to another: and the LORD hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the LORD, and that thought upon his name."

- Malachi 3:16(KJV)




I once heard it said that the duty of the theologian is to make clear distinctions. And I believe that is usefull, especially for the sake of others who either because of carelesness, inability, or sloth, do not make them in their own estimations of things.


It would not surprise me that one of the devils stategems is most thoroughly achieved when he is able to take something that is good and useful to the people of God, to subvert it into something else, and by way of association with that good and original thing, cause what was once useful to be neglected or abandoned altogether.

The Law is neglected in preaching because some make it a means of salvation. Fasting and other disciplines are looked upon with suspicion because of the cry of works righteouness and whatever else.



But would it be wrong, for instance, to meditate for long periods upon the attributes of God? It doesn't appear to me to be so.

When David says, 'When I consider thy heavens', it doesn't mean he had a revelation from a passing thought. At least I don't think so. If I recall correctly, one of the words in the greek language that is translated 'to see', means to gaze upon and to look upon intently.

According to the Hebrew dictionary, one of the words translated [i]meditate[/i] means 'to murmur', and another means 'to ponder' and by implication, to talk(to ones' self outloud). When Issac went out into a field at eventide it says he did so to meditate, the word there being defined as to 'muse pensively'.

I'm confident that anyone else who has spent more than a few moments gazing intently at a passage of scripture, who has spent long periods of time running it over in their minds, has also found as I have some insight into the passage which had not appeared to them before.


And I cannot see where it would be unholy to look long and intently at any of the attributes of God. And in so doing, to worship Him.






_________________
Christopher Joel Dandrow

 2010/4/3 13:25Profile





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