Listening to God
Last week I asked you to consider silence … To step away from the noise and distractions that fill every waking minute of our lives.
Have you noticed that even our spiritual life is filled with noise?
Now I’m all for praise and worship music.
But I question if we have not removed the opportunity for God to speak to us because we never provide a quiet space in our time with God.
We are a people who avoid silence.
Even in worship…
We fill every moment with sound – and when there is no sound, when the worship service has moments of silence, we feel awkward.
One minister pointed out, that even when receiving the bread and the cup, we fill the air with music. At a time when we are called to focus on the life-giving body and blood of Jesus, we still want background sound rather than silence.
How about our prayer time?
Do you find yourself avoiding the silence before God by filling it with continuous request to God or reading continuously from a devotional book?
A monk once joked, the boy Samuel in the Bible said, Speak Lord, for thy servant is listening; while we more often say, “Listen, Lord, for thy servant is speaking.”
My times visiting the monastery have taught me a new and greater appreciation for silence and even lengthy times of silence in prayer.
I’m understand a little better what Mother Teresa said her prayer time -
I always begin my prayer in silence, for it is in the silence of the heart that God speaks. God is the friend of silence-we need to listen to God because it's not what we say but what He says to us and through us that matters.
How do we listen to God in silence?
We must allow ourselves a time of complete silence – most of us find this difficult since we’ve not made this a spiritual habit in our lives.
Let me share a few ideas-
Listen to your thoughts
What thoughts come racing to your mind during this silence?
What are these thoughts telling you about your focus?...about what is consuming you?
Do these thoughts point to a life crowded with projects and assignments?
Do these thoughts highlight that we’re allowing social media, television and other sources to influence what we think about?
Ask God to bring to mind that which He desires for you to give focus.
Listen through nature – sit outside, what do you hear, how does God’s creation speak to you?
Listen through Scripture
After a period of silence either read a few scripture verses or better yet quote scripture from memory.
Very powerful time in prayer, when after silence, you then voice back to God His holy word.
His word that you have hidden in your heart by memorizing.
The Lord’s Prayer found in Matthew 6.
The 23rd Psalm
Psalm 8
Psalm 95
Great passages to memorize.
Our time in prayer should not be confined to reading a prayer list to God or reading the devotional thoughts of a contemporary author. Throughout Christian history, men and women have explored the mystery of God in extended times of silent prayer.
Take some time this week to find a quiet place, to be silent before our magnificent God, to listen.