5700 Rudnick Ave. Woodland Hills, CA 91367 (818) 346-6968 Home > Resources > Prayer Resources > Pray to Experience God as Real PRAYER RESOURCES   PRAY TO EXPERIENCE GOD AS REAL The first sentence of Psalm 63 is a great personal claim: “O God, you are my God.” The heart of prayer is communion. Communion means being with, in union, sharing. Lets go back and read the part of Psalm 63 printed in our insert last week.   Psalm 63:1-8:   O God you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is not water. So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory. Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you. So I will bless you as long as I live; I will lift up my hands and call on your name. My soul is satisfied as with a rich feast, and my mouth praises you with joyful lips when I think of you on my bed, and meditate on you in the watches of the night; for you have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I sing for joy. My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.   Nothing is real in our experience except those things with which we habitually deal. Persons say that they do not pray because God is not real to them. A truer statement would be that God is not real because they do not pray. Harry Emerson Fosdick puts this graphically:   The practice of prayer is necessary to make God not merely an idea held in the mind but a Presence recognized in the life. In a exclamation that came from the heart of personal religion, the psalmist cried, “O God, thou art my God” (Psalm 63:1). To stand afar off and say “O God” is neither difficult not searching… but it is an inward and searching matter to say, “O God, thou art my God.” The first is theology, the second is religion; the first involves only opinion, the second involves vital experience; the first can be reached by thought, the second must be reached by prayer; the first leaves God afar off, the second alone makes [God] real. To be sure, all Christian service where we consciously ally ourselves with God’s purpose, and all insight into history where we see God’s providence at work, help to make God real to us; but there is an inward certainty of God that can come only from personal communion with God.   Is this a new thought to you? Have you failed to pray consistently because God did not seem real to you? What an insight: God does not seem real because we do not pray. Do you see the implication of that? If we want to realize God, we must pray. Ponder that for a few minutes. It is a valuable thought about God. How does it fit into your experience of God?   It may be that we will never learn to pray, never have any ongoing, creatively disciplined prayer life until our desire for communion with God is so great that we will be driven to pray. Consider that thought for a few minutes. How great is your hunger for communion with God?