Prayer Is a Journey

By John Wheeler

The book is a prayer journey from sinner to saint for anyone who is on the journey.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press AU
• Release date: Dec 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9781982295851

John Wheeler

The author is a modern mystic. He has made a lifetime of study of God through intense prayer and purgation. Studying the writings of the Spanish mystics. The author is a Lawyer, and qualified marriage counselor.

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Copyright © 2022 John Wheeler.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the Holy Bible, King James Version (Authorized Version). First published in 1611. Quoted from the KJV Classic Reference Bible, Copyright © 1983 by The Zondervan Corporation.

ISBN: 978-1-9822-9584-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-9585-1 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date:  12/06/2022

CONTENTS

Introduction

Prayer Is A Journey

Beginnings

The Need for Change

When and Where Should We Pray.

Prayer

Listening to God in Prayer

Trusting God

God Needs Us

This Earthly Existence

The Interior Castle

Prayer Requests

Prayer for Our Enemies

Prayer for the Spiritual Gifts

Prayer for Righting Injustices in the Environment

Study

Working in the Garden

Controlling Our Environment by Choosing the Company We Keep

Advancing in Prayer

The Terrible Effect of Sin in the Soul

The Night of Sense

Increase of Faith

The Night of Spirit

The Life Journey

Understanding the Bible

Some Myths that I Was Taught

Love Marriage and Family

Epilogue

INTRODUCTION

image%20001.jpg

This rock probably lay on the moon for 4.5

billion years until discovered by NASA

Slowly consider how long 4.5billion years is, then

consider 4.5 billion times 4.5 billion then consider

ETERNITY

PRAYER IS A JOURNEY

W hy is prayer a journey?

It is a very easy question to answer as every soul on the planet is on a journey either to God or away from Him.

For those on the journey to him to advance on the journey you must advance in prayer.

This is my journey and my discoveries I hope the book is helpful.

One of the most surprising things I learnt about people after listening to them over a long period of time in various counselling situations and ordinary life situations is that almost everyone does their best at being the person they are.

Butchers, bakers, candlestick makers, either married or single, no matter how poor their behavior may appear to outside eyes, are by and large trying their best.

If they don’t see the need for improvement in their behavior, they just make do with what comes along.

Most leave the formation of themselves to random chance.

This can produce some pretty amazing results.

It is astounding to see what people consider to be normal behavior for themselves.

They have no insight into how poorly they are performing as a human being.

They have no insight into a higher or better existence or no desire to do the necessary work on themselves to change.

The reason, I suppose, is that they don’t know any better than what they have learnt or chosen to learn to that stage of their lives and if nothing happens to encourage them to change or reflect then they don’t.

It is hard to know what we don’t know.

Yet being aware that we don’t know is one of the highest forms of awareness.

I think that very few people are deliberately slack or churlish.

They are just under performers because of lack of insight.

In understanding this, I found it was a great aid to being charitable in my dealings with others.

It was also an aid to an understanding of the things I am writing about here.

If, either their life situation or they themselves are not supplying the challenge for them to change they don’t see the need for change.

They are just growing old without growing up and to grow up one must grow inwards i.e. climb the mountain which is referred to so many times in spiritual literature.

They are living in accordance with the rules they have learnt, either consciously or sub-consciously, without any substantial input or attempt at self-improvement, which would help them to grow.

They are a product of the lifestyle and/or environment, which they have chosen for themselves.

Environment is such a large factor in human development.

If we are to learn, then where is the best place but our environment.

If our environment is less than desirable then we are in grave danger.

We have nothing to compare or contrast ourselves with other than our environment if we are not studying or trying to improve ourselves in some way.

The environment of today has so many traps for the unwary. Licentiousness is rife; Christian values are denounced at every turn.

It is little wonder that people are mis-instructed by this environment and have a distorted view of life.

Their value system is the value system of the world.

Many have fallen asleep (spiritually).

If a person has fallen asleep to the point that their soul is dead then they have already entered the fire that never goes out.

Sadly when this happens there is nothing that can be done for them.

Their lot here on earth is then affliction .. there is no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and its image and for anyone who receives the mark of its name¹.

Their hell has commenced here.

They have fallen into the morass and they don’t ask for help.

Any priest who does hospital rounds or is called to the dying will have seen this many times.

The person is on their deathbed. They say don’t worry father it’s too late for me, sometimes it is their last words.

They are like drowning people who are thrown a life raft and won’t get into it.

Then they go to the judgment to which we are all subject.

For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God².

They have made their choice for all eternity.

The same sort of thing has happened to me when I have spoken to people who are incurably sick or dying, and I tried to encourage them to make their peace with God.

The answer was frequently the same, they would say to me Its too late for me to change, God wouldn’t listen to me now.

The human heart can get hard so quickly without our even knowing it, much more quickly then we think.

It’s our behavior and/or lack of faith that causes this.

God has shown His anger to us but we have not responded.

Then there is no anger from God, except the ultimate anger of no anger; then it is too late.

Heaven and hell start on earth.

We die at a time when we think not.

There are numerous references to this in the Bible. ³

They refer to death of the soul not to death of the body.

Many people know when their bodies are going to die, doctors tell them you have so many months or weeks to live so the references are to death of the soul not of the body.

Many people try to interpret this book of the Bible from a fundamentalist viewpoint and fall into error.

The warnings of not knowing when Jesus is coming must be heeded especially as we don’t know the time and the warnings are of the death of our soul not the body.

Many people believe they can ignore God all their lives and make their peace with God on their deathbed.

Well some do this, but many do not and more importantly, cannot.

See I am coming like a thief, blessed be the one who stays awake and is clothed, not going about still naked and exposed to shame⁴.

It is easy enough to understand what this passage means if we interpret it in ‘spirit’.

Clothed in the clothing of righteousness not still naked in that regard; the godless are exposed to shame, not God’s children.

No one who believes in Him shall be put to shame⁵.

There is the same reference to ‘nakedness’ in the book of Genesis.

Adam and Eve lost their innocence, they had sinned and were spiritually naked, and in other words they felt and were guilty.

They saw themselves as they really were when they had this insight for the first time.

So then let us not fall asleep as others do⁶.

This book is for the living…….let the dead bury their own dead⁷.

BEGINNINGS

A ll have sinned, … . For there is no one who does not sin…. ⁸.

This book is written for sinners, who still believe and want to be saved.

I have walked this journey before you; I am still on it. The following are some of the lessons I learnt.

Most of us are lukewarm in our youth so God spits us out of his mouth⁹.

I can remember being aware of being in God’s mouth on two occasions in my life once when I was about 18 years of age and I was helping a client prepare a legal case for the next day and I said to the client here is what’s going to happen tomorrow, the other side are going to say such and such you’re going to say such and such and that will win you the case

And that’s exactly what happened.

The other time I was doing some marriage counselling and I became aware that words were forming on my lips without from my mind.

I spoke to my wife who was also doing counselling at that time and she had had exactly the same experience.

I think that being spat out of God’s mouth is what is meant by being thrown out of the Garden of Eden.

The Garden of Eden is not a physical place somewhere in Africa but the spiritual state of the soul before we get core freedom ¹⁰.

Everyone has lived in the Garden of Eden i.e. been in this spiritual state since their birth.

We get core freedom and we sin so God spits us out of His mouth.

It is when we are cast from the Garden, i.e. that we can get insight into our sinful being, and then we see that we are naked i.e. having no power or strength of our own apart from God.

We get feelings of inadequacy and hopelessness

This is what Karl Jung described the situation as.

The innocence of our youth is lost by our sin, as a consequence men must work by the sweat of their brow and women bring forth children in pain.

All our imagined power or strength belongs to God and our sin causes Him to take them away, curtail them or at least show us they are his not ours.

Once we have been removed from the Garden of Eden we can’t go back, because St Michael the arch angel stands at the gate and stops us from re-entering.

Most of us drift along following our own will.

We all believe there is a God but in accordance with what He says about belief, which is, believing means doing what He says, we do not believe.

Most people live by feelings; their view is if it feels good do it.

We sin and God does not seem to do anything.

God has given us free will and He lets us use it.

We are not aware that there is a problem while we are in The Garden of Eden.

I think that in this state everything is done for us, because our conscience is still being formed we are not culpable in God’s eyes for things that we will be later on.

We are innocent in our view and do not see any problems with our behavior.

When He casts us out, our view of things such as our concept of self, ego strength etc. starts to change, in addition other things start to change in our lives.

We are aware somehow that things are not right, there is this feeling that we are missing something, we drift along in this state for some time until the spirit of God finally motivates us to find him.

St Augustine said, My soul was restless O Lord till I found You.

I think these words describe this state very clearly.

The only ‘food’ for a soul is prayer and being holy.

All worldly pursuits do not satisfy the need hunger of the soul.

We are all on the same journey, that is, the journey to find truth and God or to deny truth or God’s existence.

We live in accordance with a value system of some sort; we live subject to our own rules. Even the worst serial killers have some sort of interior value system

As I have said, this individual interior value system can lead to some pretty amazing interpretations of good.

A Godless existence leads to dryness of the real spirit of our existence.

We know in our hearts that we must find God but we are so slow to make the move.

Many of us are like St Augustine who said, "convert me Lord….but not just yet"

No matter how dry the spirit gets once we make the decision to follow God, He can put flesh back onto our dry bones. (revive our dry spirit)

The passage about the dry bones in Ezekiel has a very succinct way of expressing it.

The hand of the Lord came upon me, and He brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me all around them; there were many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. He said to me Mortal, can these bones live?

I answered, O Lord God, you know.

Then He said to me, "prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones:

I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.

I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord."¹¹

Most people are under performers on the life journey and the spiritual journey.

However, on the spiritual journey this is not good enough.

It is God’s will that we be holy:

Be holy, for I am holy.¹²

It therefore follows, tritely, that if we are not being holy then it is contrary to God’s will and therefore there will be problems of some sort in our lives.

Our fervor needs to be like the Muslims but without the violence of some of their more radical members.

I read somewhere that the Muslims will be converted eventually to Christianity, that is an interesting thought.

I got problems I saw and in many instances problems I didn’t see.

Things may not go as we hoped for, in our marriage, in our occupation, in financial matters, we may encounter mental illness or emotional problems etc.

I was tossed on the stormy sea of life or drifting along in it.

Because I didn’t know what the problem is or how to fix it I drifted.

It is till I looked back on my life that I realized I was not getting as much out of my life as I should or as I would like or that life is passing me by its then I saw that there was a problem.

God tries to reach everyone, He loves all and tries to reach all but our senses are dull.

One reason I didn’t hear is that I didn’t see it as Him trying to call.

Perhaps it is a bad situation in which I found myself; perhaps it is one of the many problems of life that beset me.

I encountered many trials and tried to overcome them myself so I thought it was my ‘strength’ that was doing it.

I did not see it as God.

I was living in accordance with the rules I had for myself, and because I was not following a prayer filled life these were not God’s rules.

I found out if I wanted to effect a change in my life and start to live it in glorious living color instead of black and white then the means were available to me, that is, to be holy.

This means starting a relationship or a deeper relationship with God.

I was searching for something that I could not determine, and I found the answer when I finally turned to God.

In my own case what I was searching for must have been in my past experience and I was to find it later in life in singing hymns with a group of committed Christians.

It reminded me of the peace I felt when singing the same hymns with my school friends when I was very young.

When I experienced this I knew I had come home.

This was the commencement of the journey I am going to describe and the things I was taught on the way.

I soon found out that most of the things I had learnt or been taught in my youth about religion were insufficient for the journey and in many cases wrong.

In my own case one of the many faults I decided to rectify in my life was the lack of religion in my life.

I became reconciled to God and started to practice religion again.

I expected a return to the innocence of youth.

Even though I had become reconciled to God I felt different somehow this time.

The joy and innocence of my youth were gone.

I felt like a leech that has had its fill of blood, bloated and uncomfortable.

I had used my will to sin and things had changed in me that I didn’t even know about.

I soon found out that when we lose God, errors multiply at a geometric rate and continue until to be stored in us until we come to our senses and have God restore our soul.

These errors were in my value system, and in most cases were imperceptible to me.

These errors which I did not even see, were in my mind and heart because my spirit was not God’s.

This happens to all sinners.

The faults remain till removed.

To illustrate the point I remember speaking to someone one day that I had known for some years.

I had not seen him for a few years, I remember from my previous meeting with him that his spirit was ‘breaking’ down because I could hear it in his speech.

Now two years later it had become significantly worse, much worse in fact, and I asked him if anything had changed in his life since I had seen him before.

He told me no, and I remember thinking to myself how marked was the change since our last meeting.

He had no insight into what was happening in his soul.

If the Spirit of God is not with us then who