Hey, Bridgetown Church and any and all of you listening, John Mark Comer here, welcome

to the Bridgetown Daily for Friday, April 9.

Today is called Good Friday in the Church Calendar, and it's a day that followers of Jesus

all over the world set aside to memorialize the cross as we get ready for Easter Sunday.

More than that, to get in touch with the emotional pain of Jesus on the cross and our own emotional

pain for life east of Eden, as Steinbeck called it, a life with death and crucifixion and

the Roman Empire and COVID-19 and injustice and compromising complicity of religious leaders

and economic fallout and unemployment and all that we feel over it.

In order to move through our emotional pain to Easter hope.

Now today we wrap up a week-long kind of mini-series on the Bridgetown Daily, Uncontemplative

Prayer.

We covered breath prayer and welcoming prayer and imaginative prayer and to end, I want

to kind of talk about what I call Gethsemane prayer.

Now you will not find this in a book on contemplative prayer or from any one of the spiritual masters

like Julian of Norwich or Saint Teresa or Saint John of the Cross or Henry Now and not at all.

This is just out of my own life.

And again, to repeat what we've said all week, it's not a technique, it's a template.

It's not a technique to control prayer or God or an outcome or even get to a desired outcome

with God or your own spiritual formation.

It's just a template for you to open yourself up to God.

You may find it helpful.

You may not take it or leave it.

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