Shhh! I'm listening to God

When I'm frantic, upset, or preoccupied, I sometimes tell myself to take a break and listen to God.

I don't do that often enough, I'm afraid.  But I did that this week and I had a joyful conversation with him.

For the last several years, I have often sat down at my computer and typed in a journal the questions I have of God.  I have listened spiritually and written down the responses.  The questions are usually about my own life and my walk with God.  And the answers I get are always in accordance with scripture.

Without fail, I rise from the computer feeling the peace of God.

But I feel I should go beyond this and make it an hour-by-hour habit.  I need to do this especially when I'm all worked up and filled with negative thoughts.

God's answers to my written questions are not always what I want to hear.  But they help to put me on the right path.  And they help to give me a broader perspective - God's perspective - on my problems.

Someone I know spends an hour every morning in silent, contemplative prayer.  He tells me that often God will drop a thought in his mind during the day that answers a question in his mind.

King David was a listener.  He frequently took his questions to God and God guided him.

In Psalm 139:17, he said: "How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!  How vast is the sum of them."

I believe God is talking to us all the time and we hear only a small fraction of what he is saying.  That's because we aren't listening.

There are many people over the ages who have written about listening prayer - among them Frank Laubach, Madame Guyon, and Brother Lawrence.  As our world turns faster and faster, more and more Christians are discovering the value of seeking God and listening to him.

The following is a video by pastor and author Charles Stanley talking about listening prayer.

Why the devil hates prayer

The devil hates prayer because God works through prayer.

C.S. Lewis, the great British writer and professor, described Satan's problem with prayer in a dialogue between a senior and a junior devil called The Screwtape Letters, first published in 1942.

In it, Screwtape tells his nephew Wormwood "whenever there is prayer, there is a danger of His (God's) own immediate action."  So, he urges his nephew to do everything he can to keep the new young Christian he is dealing with from praying - and, if he prays, from praying to God from his heart.

When Christians pray to God in faith, Screwtape says "our (the devils') situation is desperate."

Lewis was not exaggerating.

Talking about prayer, Jesus said that "whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven."  And he went on to say that "if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven." (Matthew 18:18-19)

Those are powerful promises.  They are a call to fervent prayer.

Jesus lived what he preached.  He prayed before speaking to great crowds.  He prayed before making key decisions.  It was his way of determining what God wanted and then carrying it out.

Perhaps Jesus' most critical prayers came on the Mount of Olives, the night before he died on the cross.  While his disciples slept, he prayed so hard that he sweat drops of blood, fighting Satan's effort to keep him from going to the cross.  The Father answered by sending an angel to strengthen him in his resolve (Luke 22:39-46).

The apostle John wrote in 1 John 3:8 that "the reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work."

When we pray to our Lord, we are destroying the devil's work.

"Welcome back!"

God never turns his back on you.  He's waiting for you.

Sometimes, I feel that I have let God down and he won't listen to my prayers.  That is a serious mistake.

Satan rejoices when I give up and stop talking with God.  He's good at tossing condemning thoughts into my mind.  He knows the power of prayer and he does his best to pull the plug on people who pray.

There is, of course, the great story of the Prodigal Son that Jesus tells (Luke 15:11-32).  I often come back to that because it shows God the Father's heart.  He never stops loving and he always welcomes us home.

As you know, the younger son in the story asks for his inheritance, leaves home, and wastes it in living the high life.  It's while working with pigs for a little money that he decides it would be worthwhile returning home and asking his father if he could work as a servant.

When the father, who has been waiting for him, sees his son, he rushes out and embraces him BEFORE the young man blurts out his apology and his request to be a servant.  And the old man rejoices at his son's return, showers good things upon him and welcomes him back into the family.

The father didn't condone his son's wild living.  But he knew his son was sorry and wanted to return home.

In her wonderful little book Experiencing the Depths of Jesus Christ, Jeanne Guyon talks about sins and distractions from prayer.  She says: "Once you have departed from God, you must return to him as quickly as possible."

Don't beat yourself up, she says.  Confess whatever sins you may have committed.  Go back to God.  He'll welcome you.

I am reminded, as well, of the words in Revelation 3:20 - words that inspired the name of this blog.  In this passage, God is speaking to the lukewarm church of Laodicea:

"Here I am!  I stand at the door and knock.  If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him and he with me."

Here I see Jesus knocking on my door, asking to speak with me.  My job is to open the door and listen to him and talk with him.

He's always there.

Giving thanks

I realized this morning that I was grumping on Canadian Thanksgiving Day.  Not good.

I find it easy to groan, complain and criticize.  But I have learned, too, that I feel much better when I praise God and give thanks.  And, as one writer said, God is worthy of our worship.

It's something I keep coming back to - praise and worship and thanksgiving.  I come back to it to remind myself how important it is.

I have been thinking recently that I must live my life every day in a cloud of thanks and praise and worship.  That's why I caught myself grumping this morning - I was out of tune with my Lord.

This being Thanksgiving Day, I will concentrate on thanks to God.  Dick Eastman, author of The Hour than Changes the World,  says:

"Thanksgiving differs from praise in that praise focuses on who God is, whereas thanksgiving focuses on what God has specifically done for us."

Eastman says thanksgiving might be called a "confession of blessings" where we recognize specifics of what God has done for us and voice them to the Lord.  He stresses being specific, mentioning even the little things in life.  It won't be long before we see how good God is.

Eastman suggests we let our minds wander over the activities of the day and thank the Lord for the good things he has given us - often through others.

He recommends that we:

• Give thanks for spiritual blessings.  Have you met God in a special way in your prayer or study time?  Has he worked profoundly in the lives of friends or family?
• Give thanks for material blessings. Thank him for small things - the warm house you live in or the car that takes you easily to grocery stores.  Not everyone has these blessings.
• Give thanks for physical blessings. Thank the Lord for being able to walk, or hear, or speak, or see.  Put aside whatever pain you may have at the moment and thank him for what is physically good in your life.
• Give thanks for outside blessings.  Thank God for what he is doing in the world around you.  Perhaps it might be for someone who has come to know God as Saviour.  Or, you could thank him for services of Christian compassion around the globe.

David put it best in Psalm 103:2: "Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits."

Believing what God says

Author E.W. Kenyon says your prayer life will be strong if you believe what God says.  And it will be weak if you doubt him.

It seems obvious.  But I find myself constantly second-guessing God.  I question God and what he says about prayer if I don't get an immediate answer along the lines I desire.

But Kenyon, author of In His Presence, says that believers must take God's words in scripture as truth.

For example, the Bible says I am a "new creation" - a new person - and that the old way of life has gone (2 Corinthians 5:17).  Do I believe that?  Or do I listen to Satan who tells me I am worthless?

In essence, Kenyon is saying I must accept the way of seeing myself and the world through God's eyes and not of others around me.

Kenyon declares that I must speak the words of God to myself frequently, anchor them in my mind.  After all, Satan is busy getting me to say negative things about myself and others in my thoughts.

Of course, Jesus is the great example of using scripture to refute attacks and temptations, especially by Satan in the wilderness.  Jesus stood in faith on those words of God.

It is a practice that Christian psychologist and former seminary professor Neil Anderson has used.  In his book Victory over the Darkness, Anderson lists scriptures describing who we are in Jesus Christ.  He has helped many change their way of thinking and leave behind crippling fears and addictions by constantly re-reading these scriptures until they sink into their minds and hearts.

Having a truly biblical understanding of ourselves and of God's love for us is one step to more effective prayer.  If we don't believe God loves us, we won't expect him to answer our prayers.  And without faith, our prayer lives are bound to be weak.

Kenyon has much more to say about prayer.  But his basic message is always the same: Take God's words, make them part of yourself, and act on them in prayer.