Message: “The Prayerful Life, vol. 3: the Mystery and Frustration of Asking God for…Anything” from Ross Stackhouse

Message at 34:00. Most people revere Mother Teresa for how she cared for the poor, rehabilitated addicts and showed extraordinary love for people in some of the darkest places of the world. But by her own account, her life–all this beautiful service and work–was simply a byproduct of…you guessed it…prayer. We’ve been talking about how prayer is a form of practicing and deepening trust and friendship with the God of all creation. But it’s also how we open ourselves to the powerful work of God’s Spirit within us, and it’s how we position our lives so we join Jesus in restoring this world that is not as it should be. Prayer is an intimacy with God that leads to fruitful, life-changing action.

Related Topics: discipleship | More Messages from Ross Stackhouse

From Series: "The Prayerful Life: a Series for Beginners, Experts & Skeptics"

Everyone has experiences with and opinions about prayer. Though many folks have tons of good experiences and positive views of prayer, there are still many others (perhaps more) who struggle with prayer. What if prayer--for those with the good experiences and those with the not-so-good experiences--is like a land we haven't fully discovered yet? We want to help folks grow in prayer as the ultimate space of growing intimacy with God and being shaped by God’s heart for an eternal kind of life in the here and now and beyond. Prayer is the space where we are still with God, listen to God, thank God, get angry at God, grieve with God, confess to God, petition God. It’s a lifelong garden of relationship where we cultivate trust with the One who made us, saves us, and sustains us. It’s the incubator where the Spirit shapes us so we join Jesus in his restoring work so Earth is as it is in heaven.