Prayer Stage
In recognising God’s presence in our lives and in world, spontaneously we just feel moved to pray – to respond to what we have just seen, touched, experienced. In our own words we thank the Father for the gift for the passage, for the grace-filled memories that have come to mind, in which we have met his saving presence. We thank the Father that Jesus is alive in us; that there is something of God’s grace at work in us. And we are privileged to be part of this story of grace. We experience a solidarity with all in whom this passage has been fulfilled and we are moved to thank God with them too.
Of the three, the prayer of thanksgiving is the primary one. If we don’t feel to pray a prayer of thanksgiving the chances are we have not done a good meditation. and we would do well to go back to meditation again.
We are invited to pray in our own words, interlaced with biblical words or phrases from the passage. In this way our ‘life-experiences’ are elevated, ennobled, enriched and celebrated as as word of God which they truly are.. Our ‘stories’ take their place alongside the great people of the Bible and of the world.
Repentance. We will also feel moved to a prayer of repentance. Through our journey with this passage we now recognize that we are not all that we could be, all that we are called to be. We remember similar situations where we have been an obstacle to God’s presence breaking into the world today.
We are conscious too, that even at those times when we have experienced something of His presence in us, it could have been more.
Here too, there is a real sense of solidarity in sin with all who have fallen short, as we pray, Lord have mercy.
Petition. Here, we ask Jesus to come into our lives and our world even more than he has before. We pray that His presence may increase. We have seen something of His presence and now we long to see more and more of it; we long to enter more fully into it. We pray, ‘come Lord Jesus (maranatha)!’ Come more perfectly than you have come before into our lives, into our family, into our church and society, into the world.