Compiled by: Keyn, with contributions from community members and teachings received through Al Fike.
Date: May 30, 2025
Prayer is the gateway to receiving Divine Love and the lifeblood of our connection with God. Understanding how to pray for Divine Love is essential at the beginning of our journey, but it is equally vital that we constantly revisit and deepen our appreciation of this process throughout our path.
In recent weeks, our community engaged in a rich and heartfelt discussion on the nature of prayer as it pertains to receiving God’s Divine Love. This conversation inspired many of us to share messages and reflections. It also prompted a series of messages through medium Al Fike from our beloved teacher, Augustine, offering a timely reminder of the foundational importance of prayer.
Augustine emphasized that to receive the gift of Divine Love, we must ask. Whether through words or not, there must be a conscious and active reaching out to our Heavenly Father, a clear setting of intention, and true longing. This truth remains a fundamental teaching, and while it may seem simple, it is profound enough to warrant continual reflection and practice.
Augustine stated on 18 May 2025 that the inflowing of God’s Love “does not come because you have an assumption it is given to you.” Instead, it requires “earnest prayer, asking for the inflowing of this gift of Love.” It is not enough to believe or assume that Love is ours; we must consciously desire and invite it into our souls. Prayer, therefore, cannot be reduced to a mental exercise, a simple meditation lacking intent, or a repetition of words. It must emerge from a deep place within us, from our soul’s most sincere longing. Augustine explains that “desire must be pure and full,” and this deep desire enacts the laws that allow the inflowing of Divine Love (20 May 2025).
This requirement to ask consciously challenges the assumptions of many who seek a passive or automatic relationship with God on the basis of general meditation or ritual. Instead, it calls for an active engagement, allowing the desires of the soul to be expressed. It is easy to confuse religious activity with true prayer. The world is full of practices, yet many of them are empty of the soul’s true longing. In a reflection shared within our community, it was noted that “there is less difference between night and day than there is between practices and prayer”. Practices may be performed out of habit, but prayer is the living communion of the soul with God.
Judas, in his message through HR from 9 January 2002, expressed this concept as follows:
“God belongs to the Real, or rather, He is Reality. You can only approach Him through the Real, and not through words, which belong to the Symbolic. The world of God is not the world of language. To recite automatic prayers is like reciting the multiplication table. You have already read this. Words only are effective when they are accompanied by what comes from inside, from the soul, because the soul also belongs to the Real. It is the image of God, even if it is not His Substance. God communicates from soul to soul. Man can also do so, but in the world of his reality, the world that he perceives as reality, he does not in general do so.
Prayer does not need words. It needs desires, longings, it needs heart. We could say that prayer is the intent of coming closer to God, of approaching at-onement with Him. It is our small step to bridge the distance between Him and us. We take one step, and God covers the rest of the way.”
If we wish to receive the Love that transforms and uplifts, we must engage our hearts fully. We must not merely think about Divine Love or admire it with distance. We must invite it in, pleading as a child to a loving parent, and have patience with the gradual process of transformation. As Augustine explained, even “those who are frustrated and lack patience upon this journey often fall away because this is not what they seek. They seek the instant gratification” (18 May 2025).
Words may be helpful to focus the mind on the intent of our soul, especially at the beginning of our journey, and it is always safe to have the question formed in your mind. But the true currency of prayer is longing, and this should always underpin that mindful question. “When your longing is true and strong,” Augustine said, “you ignite the laws that pertain to the inflowing of God’s Love” (20 May 2025). As St John says in his message to James Padgett on 11 July 1917, “One moment of true soul-felt longing is more effective than hours of prayer where these longings are not present.” Our beloved Jesus echoed this a year later on 25 October 1918: “A long prayer, or even one formulated into words, is not necessary, as in order to have the longing it is not necessary that words should be used to give it form. The longing may be rapid as unformed thought.”
Ideally, prayer for Divine Love must become an ongoing disposition. As Judas put it through HR, “it is possible to be in constant prayer, without pronouncing a single word” (9 January 2002). This disposition is not only cultivated in moments of solitude or during structured prayer time. It can pervade every moment of the day. It involves turning the heart toward God throughout the activities of life—during moments of work, rest, and recreation. Whenever there is a quiet moment, a moment to breathe, it can become a moment to reach for Divine Love.
Another aspect that our discussions highlighted is the relationship between prayer and humility. Augustine explained that “along with this longing often comes a vulnerability, a humbleness, a feeling of wanting to be with your Heavenly Father, a childlike vulnerability and desire that originates within the soul” (20 May 2025). This vulnerability is crucial to establish our innocence. It is in this innocence that true sincerity is established.
Indeed, Augustine reminded us that prayer must be genuine. Sincerity is the essential quality that allows prayer to rise up to God. It cannot be based in pretense. God listens to the honest outpouring of the soul. Prayer that is true is marked by honesty, humility, and a real desire to commune with God, free from artifice or mental fabrication. Only in this genuine condition does the soul open fully to receive the inflowing of Divine Love.
Thus intention plays a critical role. As Augustine advises, “intention is a crucial aspect of your spiritual journey,” and “intentions that come from the soul are purer and more powerful in their effects and their outcomes than that which comes from the mind” (18 May 2025). When our intentions are pure—when they arise from a true desire to draw closer to God—our prayers are more effective. They align us more fully with the Will of God.
We find ourselves humbly returning to the foundation: to receive Divine Love, we must ask. We must yearn. We must humble ourselves before God and open our souls to His gift. As Augustine assures us: “Seek this gift, beloved souls. Seek it with all your heart, with all your desire, and God shall surely bless you as His Holy Spirit conveys this gift into your soul” (18 May 2025).