Letting God Change Our Minds
Letting God Change Our Minds
If you’ve read this prayer blog, you may have noticed my appreciation for Richard Rohr. His words and perspectives challenge me and invite me to rethink my assumptions. His daily emails follow a weekly theme. The theme that inspired the thoughts below was on the desert mothers and fathers—early Christians who renounced the comforts of society to pursue a life of self-discipline, prayer, and solitude in the wilderness.
The early desert mothers and fathers saw prayer differently. They spoke of apatheia—a deep peace, a settledness of heart that comes when we stop trying to manage God and instead let God meet us. They called it “the prayer of quiet,” echoing Jesus’ words about going into our “inner room” (Matthew 6:6).
Prayer for them wasn’t about finding the right words. It wasn’t even about thinking hard or trying to figure life out. It was about awakening to a Presence already here—a conversation God never stops having with us. That’s why Paul could say, “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17).
Early in my faith journey, what I knew about prayer was to bring God my lists—my needs, the things I wanted fixed for myself, for others, for the world. I felt like I was praying for what I wanted and hoping against hope that God would agree. It often felt like I was trying to persuade God to do something.
This quote from Richard Rohr really struck me:
In this early period, “prayer” didn’t refer to some kind of problem-solving transaction between humans and God, nor was it about saying words to God. It was quite literally “putting on a different thinking cap,” as the nuns used to say to us. It seems that it wasn’t “thinking” at all, as we now understand it, because such thinking is too often just reacting to or writing repetitive commentaries on the moment.
For these desert mothers and fathers, prayer was understood not as a transaction that somehow pleased God (the problem-solving understanding of prayer that emerged much later), but as a transformation of the consciousness of the one who was doing the praying. Prayer was the awakening of an inner dialogue that, from God’s side, had never stopped.
What if prayer isn’t about changing God’s mind at all? What if it’s about letting God change ours—softening our grip, calming our fears, opening our eyes to what’s right in front of us?
Maybe today, the invitation is simply to pause—take a deep breath, step into your inner room, and rest in the quiet. Even without words, that too is prayer.
A Prayer of Quiet
Lord,
Draw me into Your presence.
Quiet the noise around me and within me.
Help me to rest, to listen, to be.
Not to change Your mind,
but to let You change mine.
Amen.
Go make peace, my friends.
Pastor Leanne
Community Presbyterian Church
32202 Del Obispo
San Juan Capistrano. CA 92675
949-493-1502
info@sjcpres.org