Category Archives: SILENT SACRED SPACE Series (Prayer & Meditation)

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A Place Called Sacred (4)

Dear Father God, help me to listen. Help me to see. Help me to know You. Help me to embrace Your love. Father, I want to sense Your presence. Fill my whole self with an awareness of You.  You are beautiful. You are worthy. You are everything.

SACRED SPACE (1)

You can make your own space sacred.

FB July 2011 004Choose a specific place where you will conduct your alone time with God. Be intentional in your choice. Outside influences must be minimal. The setting selected will be well suited if it is free of clutter, confusion, noise, and other people. A chair, bench, vehicle, somewhere to sit including the floor are possible locations. Any place will do that is isolated from the normal busyness of life and has a sense of calm, peace, and soft beauty. Change it up once in awhile.

Minimize distractions. Turn off electronic devices such as phones, IPads, computers, music devices, and anything that makes noise or causes interruption in the flow of thought. A room in the home can make a good place for a sacred space when you manage its function as “sacred” by preparing it as a quiet corner for the purpose of meditation, contemplation, contemplative or interactive prayer, or the practice of silence. For a lengthy time of meditation, you may need to hire a sitter for the kids or critters in-order to manage this. It is imperative that your sacred space have little or no interference.

The possibilities are endless: You may select a spot out in nature, in a quiet room, on a park bench away from activity, in a church sanctuary, in the chapel at a monastery or on its grounds, at a picnic table near the lake, or sitting on a patio chair or porch swing. Some find a stark room the best. Some sit on the floor and sit tall. I think of Scripture and its admonition to enter your own prayer closet.

This place is not to be used for one-way talking or for nice platitudes. It is for quiet time with God that is open, honest and deep. We listen as we speak or think. We ponder in the silence. We raise our thoughts Godward as we rest in His majestic fullness.

This is a practiced spiritual discipline that one must cultivate.

You may choose to sit on a log surrounded by trees in the forest or sit on a rock amid the desert rocks, or you may stand with your toes in the sand on the ocean surf. The deal is, you must seek a place with surroundings that aid you in your receptivity and sensitivity to what God has for you, to become still, to take a pause from the daily activity…aware of His presence and holiness, and to actively listen while in the deep, deep silence. God speaks. “He leads me beside the still waters.” “My sheep hear my voice.”

  1. Select a quiet place where you can be by yourself.
  2. Remove distractions and noise.
  3. Repeat the first paragraph of this writing.
  4. Open your thoughts to God. Rest in His Presence.
  5. Make mental or physical note of your thoughts and feelings
  6. Ask, seek, and knock; pray, meditate, and contemplate; or remain silent in the deepness.
  7. Practice silence with God once soul-rest has been activated.
  8. Read Scripture, hymns, psalms, or words of praise (unless the objective is silence)
  9. Make sure it aligns with God’s ways, then act on what He gives you.
  10. Thank Father God for what you have received.

Note: This draws us closer to the heart of God and becomes possible once we have a restored relationship with Him (called salvation). Jesus Christ, through His life, death, and resurrection, made it possible for us to believe in Him and to partake of His everlasting love. Sincere faith in God and trust in Him and His offer of life will cause a conversion of the soul, which begins at the time of belief but is ongoing as we continue to transform in our spiritual self to become more like our Savior, Jesus Christ. He calls to us, and we respond. This comes first before the deeper understandings are accessed.

You can make your own sacred space.
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During this time of quietness you may find yourself weeping. That is a response to God and His Holy Spirit. You will find that the silence is not silent. You become spiritually full when you listen for the presence of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in a non-human, peace-filled, other-worldly, God-directed way.

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Sacred Space: Enter Silence with God (Part 3)

The 5 Easy Steps of Sacred Space

I never thought I would be writing this book. This week I got to thinking about my spiritual life and what has set it apart from the ordinary. Now, that’s saying a lot and could seem arrogant, but it’s not. I could probably whittle it down to two things, and they are 1) I asked God to change me, and He did (He did the heavy lifting) 2) I developed a spiritual discipline of actively listening while in contemplative, meditative, prayerful state. The second one is what I am dubbing, Sacred Space.

10563146_10202522355134252_3765578909730957646_nWhat is a Sacred Space?

This week I started writing about creating your own Sacred Space, a place set aside for ‘sacred’ contemplative time with God. This is for meditating in uninterrupted silence through an inward practice of seeking God, a rich time alone in unscripted connection with God, where one becomes aware of His eternal essence.

In my personal life, I began doing this practice many years ago when I was a teacher and four of my five children still lived at home (I was a single parent). I chose Saturday mornings for my long, alone time with God, often from when I got up in the morning until lunch time (with a break for making breakfast for the kids…pancakes on Saturday mornings).

I was seeking God with my whole heart, but not to know Him so much, but because I desperately needed Him. Over the course of time, God began to teach me and become real to me. It was incredibly sweet. I was sitting at His table and He was feeding me. My whole sense of spiritual living changed as a result of this Saturday morning time alone with God. I became refreshed and new, freed and healed. It was an ongoing process, and still is.

Sacred space is not achieved through devotional texts or scriptural study time. Rather, it is for the purpose of deep spiritual awakening facilitated through communing with Father-God and His God-head. It is the purest thing I know to complete and over-the-top happiness, which is personally and spiritually transforming on all levels. God is a relational God. That is why we need to get to the business of getting to know Him and then responding to His nudges and presence.

Hopefully I will publish a booklet about this some day with a title similar to this one: A Sacred Space Can be Yours: How to Engage Your Spiritual Walk and take it to the next level in 5 Easy Steps.

The 5 Easy Steps of Sacred Space

  1. A sacred place: Where to conduct your alone time with God, a place that is quiet and without distraction.
  2. A sacred time: When to schedule your alone time with God according to your needs and life-style.
  3. A sacred text: What to read, think or consider as you conduct your alone time with God.
  4. A sacred process: How to facilitate your alone time with God in a meaningful, refreshing way.
  5. A sacred modality. What to include as you prepare and participate in your alone time with God.

PREVIEW SNIPPET — A Sacred Space Can be Yours

A sacred space is not regimented or easily explained, yet it has a design. I could say it is defined by its open-ended lack of structure. That is not the whole story, the parameters must be adhered to or the participant will wander out in left field, where side eddies compete for attention. That is why one must have modalities that focus our attention, and we must act with great intention.

Prayerful, contemplative meditation thrives when this sacred practice is implemented in the Christian believer’s life. Why? It brings us near to the heart of God. He becomes real to us as in a living, breathing, intimate relationship. But this spiritual discipline must be set aside and valued, deemed sacred, in order for our silent sacred space to incorporate the necessary particulars that make the setting and practice both spiritually meaningful and life-enhancing.

This sacred space is called sacred because it deals with the holiness of God and our inter-connected relationship with His Holy Being. There is nothing secular in this practice because it is meant as a means to pursue and seek that which is spiritual in its full essence and related to God, Christ, and Christ’s Passion as it outworks in our lives.

In some ways this is a circular activity with no ending—it spirals upward or downward, depending—and will not complete the circle until our earthly life ends and our eternal life is fully actualized in the heavenly next-life.  The circular movement of our spiritual life is redemptive: there are ongoing aspects of death, resurrection, and new life that continually produce a godly effect in our lives. Hence, it is both loving and painful as the life  we live cycles ’round and ’round. The past reveals the lower rungs, with its blessedness, which document this ongoing spiritual transforming in our lives.

We become healthy in our invisible, core being as we embrace and live what God imparts to us throughout our days, unless we choose to live life our own way without Him. This is true for all people, including people in the church. We are either doing it our way or God’s way. Without time spent in the silence found in sacred space, we tend to remain stale, rigid, staid or stagnate in our spiritual lives without the liveliness of spontaneity and joy that marks a life connected to the Source and the love of God with the inward influence of His being.

It is also sacred because we are choosing to preserve a specific time for this pursuit and will determine to guard and honor it. Something that is “sacred” means it is not up for conversation or manipulation. It is of utmost importance to us because in our sacred space we will plumb the depths and receive the gifts our heavenly Father wishes to impart to us.

For effective alone time with God, in sacred space, there is a need for honesty and seeking, openness and confession, responding and changing. God teaches us once we decide we will actively listen. He comes along side and joins us. The minute we bolt and go back to doing it our own way (even with church things), God will let us go and gives us the reins. We lose our authenticity. At that point, we have impeded the flow. Why eat hot dogs when you can have steak? We’re settling. There is something beautiful about knowing the ways of God and knowing Him as a friend. He loves us so much.

Sacred Space is time alone with God spent seeking Him in the silence.
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