Welcome to Metamorpha...

Metamorpha is an online community for Christian spiritual formation. They want to encourage Christians and bring them together to "...prayerfully consider taking part in the depths of our ministry – participating in prayer exercises, working through the disciplines in your own life, and sharing your story with fellow travelers on the journey."

I have included one of their prayer exercises called 'The Hidden Heart' below for you to expereince. This practice is described as the prayer of Psalm 139, "Search Me Oh God..."



The Hidden Heart

We encourage you to set aside 30 minutes for this prayer exercise. This may be a different way of praying for many of you and for some it may be quite familiar. Either way, we encourage you to walk through the steps suggested below. This prayer is designed to uncover the hidden heart. The “hidden heart” refers to those areas of our heart that we spend much of our time attempting to avoid. Within the hidden heart, we have deep beliefs and desires that often run contrary to God’s truth. For example, we may verbally state during a conversation with a friend that we believe God is trustworthy. Yet when difficult circumstances arise in our lives the deep belief in our "hidden heart" may be that God is not trustworthy and as a result we may choose to manage the situation in our own power. This is the place where the Holy Spirit is loving us and is the place from which God calls us to relate to Him. You may find that this prayer exercise is overwhelming because we spend much of our time trying so desperately to avoid experiencing mess of our heart. We encourage you to remember the Lord’s grace as you pray through this prayer, because it can be quite easy to move toward self-hatred as we uncover the deep desire and beliefs that are truly in our heart. The Lord is calling you not to fix yourself as He reveals the truth of your heart, but rather to open more deeply to His transforming love in these areas of your heart. In many ways this is the prayer of Psalm 139, "Search Me Oh God..."

• Spend 10 minutes sitting before the Lord.
  • Simply pray, "Lord Jesus I am open to you."
  • Pay attention to whatever comes up. For example, you may discover anxiety, sadness, anger, lust, boredom, etc.
• Spend 15 minutes opening to God about what surfaced.
  • Pick 1 or 2 things that came up to talk to Him about.
  • Simply offer these areas of your heart to God.
  • Ask God what these things reveal about where your heart is at currently.
    • Are these attachments?
    • Are these idols?
    • Are these areas of anxiety?
  • Ask the Lord what He is doing in these areas of your heart.
    • Is He calling you to something?
    • Does He want you to confess something?
    • Does He want to explore a particular area more?
• Spend 5 minutes acknowledging who He is and centering your heart on Him.
  • You are the unconditional Lover of my soul.
  • You know me completely.
  • You sustain me.

Our prayer is that you would be open to whatever God desires for you in this time of prayer. We encourage you to share what the Lord brought up in your time of prayer with others who are walking through the prayer exercise as well.