“For in him we live and move and have our being.”
— Acts 17:28 (ESV)
“Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.”
– Genesis 28:16
For many people, prayer can become a source of guilt. Whenever the subject comes up, they quietly think, “This should be a much bigger part of my life.” Then guilt turns into fear. Maybe others are experiencing something with God that they are missing. Maybe there is a whole world of prayer that others know, but they do not. Eventually, fear becomes resignation: perhaps this is just how things will always be.
But something can begin to change when prayer is rediscovered, not merely as an idea, not merely as a duty, but as an experience of the presence of God. For many, faith lives mainly in the mind. Scripture, theology, study, words, and ideas are loved deeply. These are good things. God speaks through Scripture. The mind matters. But it is possible to train only one part of oneself to seek God. The thoughts may be active, while the deeper self—the body, soul, affections, and awareness—remains underdeveloped.
This is why silence matters. Beginning the day with silence, open hands, and a simple request for God to speak to the whole person can become a doorway into deeper prayer. At first, nothing may seem to happen. For a long time, nothing may seem to happen. But slowly, prayer may begin to enter ordinary life: family relationships, friendships, fears, work, wounds, decisions, and daily struggles.
Then a choice appears. One can explain everything away as coincidence. Or one can begin to believe that God is teaching His people to recognise His presence not only in texts and thoughts, but in relationships, ordinary life, and embodied experience.
That changes how the Bible is read.
Take Jesus’ words to the criminal on the cross: “Today you will be with me in paradise.” People often hear “paradise” and think simply of heaven. But the word also means garden. In the biblical imagination, that immediately points back to Eden—the place where God and humanity were together.
But here is the puzzle. Eden is in the past, at the beginning of the Bible. Jesus speaks of paradise as something immediately ahead: “today.” Revelation speaks of it as the final future, where the tree of life and river of life appear in the renewed creation. Paul speaks of being caught up into paradise as a present spiritual experience. So when is paradise? The biblical answer seems to be: past, present, future, and final future.
Why? Because paradise is not finally about a location on a map. Paradise is being with God.
This is why the Bible keeps showing moments where heaven and earth overlap. Jacob, running from the consequences of his own deceit, sleeps in the wilderness and dreams of heaven and earth joined together. He wakes and says, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.” The place was not holy because Jacob recognised it first. It became holy to him because God met him there.
Ezekiel, sitting in exile, is suddenly taken into a vision of God’s glory. John, on Patmos, is “in the Spirit” and finds himself before the risen Christ. Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up a mountain to pray, and as He prays His appearance is transformed. The mountain becomes a meeting place of heaven and earth.
In all these stories, prayer is not escape from reality. Prayer is awakening to reality as it truly is.
The Bible’s vision is that beneath everything visible is the living presence of God. He is not far away. In Him we live and move and have our being. Every ordinary moment is held in existence by His love. The problem is not that God is absent. The problem is that human beings are often unaware.
Prayer, then, is the practice of surrendering defended, distracted, self-protective consciousness to the God who is already near. It is opening the whole self to the eternal presence of the Father, Son, and Spirit.
This does not mean every prayer will feel dramatic. Most days will not be mountaintop experiences. But there may be more of God’s presence available in ordinary life than people assume.
The home, the office, the commute, the difficult conversation, the hospital room, the church service, the silent morning—all can become places where people learn to say, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.”
That is prayer: learning to live awake to God.
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