So the first idea of prayer in the whole Bible was: “a turning of the head, in order to face the one, who can bear the burden”. Get your head off yourself, off your words, off your needs - and you get it onto your Father - who's as close to you, as the air that you're breathing.
To the Hebrew people, the actual name of God was 'breath'. When Moses asked God: what is Your name; it's translated: My name is Jehovah. Actually what He said was: My name is Yod-He-Vav-He; which phonetically does not go together. It'd be like me saying: my name is Norshbin-Jabin-Yeshbinshavenhavenjaven - it didn't even make any sense.
Moses grew up in a culture where: if you could learn your Gods name, then you could control him. So Moses says: I want to control you - what is your name? God says: you can't box me in - are you kidding me? My name is Yod-He-Vav-He; essentially, My name is breath. The rabbis taught that the name of God was actually breathing; that essentially it mimicked the sound of breathing. Later they wrote things like: the name of God sustains life.
When you give birth to a baby, the first thing it has to do, to live, is to say the name of God. It has to breathe. The last thing someone does, before they die,: is they take their last breath; they quit saying the name of God. As you're listening to me, all of you, involuntarily, in and out, you're saying the name of God, over and over and over again, in order to sustain your life.
How gracious is God, that if you were to make an appointment with an atheist at a coffee shop, that the very breath it would take for him to say: “I do not believe in God”, he's actually utilising the name, of the one he doesn't believe in, to sustain his own life? How nice is God to let him keep breathing?
It is the name of God, that: “God is as close to you, as the air that you're breathing.
In order to live the best life, you have to live a life with that awareness; that if God is somewhere else, and you're in here, then that does not work. If God is in here, with you now; but when you go to work tomorrow, God's not there - I would say to you that we're missing something; that actually, the best life is found in: every morning, becoming aware, that the Mighty One is in you now. He's in you!
They called it ‘God consciousness’- that was prayer. If I go to the mall today (the giant Hastings mall, walking through the incredible metropolis that is down-town Hastings), that walking through that... If I stop and become aware of: the Mighty One - that's as close to me as the air that I'm breathing; that I'm just as much in the spirit, just as much in prayer - as if I was on my knees somewhere.
In accessing God, you have to understand where He actually is. What is the proximity of God? If your concept of God (your idol around God), is that: God is in heaven, and you're down here - I would say that we're missing something, that we're not living the best life; that God is actually as close to you as the air that you're breathing. That's why at rabbis, when they prayed for people, a lot of times it says: “and they breathed on them” - Jesus did this all the time.
There are websites dedicated to how horrible Benny Hinn was for ‘breathing on people’; but all you've got to do is look at how Jesus prayed - on many occasions (John 20 is one of them) it says: “and with that he said: receive the Holy Spirit - and he breathed on them”.
Why? They believed God existed in their breath. If God lives in my breath, then if I breathe on you - fair enough. So you have this idea of God: that He is everywhere; so where is God? Then the second question is this: how big is He?
How big is God? Qhat are my concepts of God? What are my concepts about the things that God would, or would not, do? All of us have them, and whatever they are, they are idols. They're idols! Whatever they are, however we conceptualise God: God would always do this; God would never do that; God would go this far; God wouldn't go this far - whatever those concepts of God are, they become idols.