Praying and Listening

For a while now I have been working out the details for my upcoming video sermons – what they are going to look like, sound like, what I am going to speak about, and so on. And for just as long, if not longer, I have been praying about the direction that God wants this ministry to take.

Prayer. Many people see prayer as a one sided conversation – we speak God listens. However, it has always been my experience that prayer is a two way conversation – We speak, God listens. God speaks, we listen. We ask, God answers. God asks, we answer.

In this world it’s hard sometimes to hear from God isn’t it? It seems that there is so much noise around us. Music, TV, cars, radios, industrial machinery, and so much noise. Even now as I write this I can hear the washing machine doing it’s thing, kids running around and play shouting in the room above my office, the clink of breakfast dishes, the hard drive running on the laptop I am writing this, oh, and there goes the fan on the very same laptop. And that’s not to mention the Since October CD I am playing as background music.

So much noise… it’s a wonder that we ever hear from God at all. I was reading recently in our Instruction Manual for Life about Jesus and how he would find the time to spend with his Father in prayer. “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.” Mark 1:35. No doubt there was noise in Jesus’ day. No doubt there were distractions. And no doubt it was just as difficult to hear God amidst all the noise back then as it is today. The difference is that Jesus sought to be alone with God, and so he took himself away from all the hustle and bustle of every day life to seek out a quiet place to speak to his Father and listen for his gentle whisper, or the still small voice of God (1 Kings 19:12).

The question is, do we take the time in our busy and noisy lives to seek out a place where we can be alone with our Father and listen to him. I will be the first to admit that I don’t do this enough. However, I will say in my defense that I have been trying to listen to God’s voice for every step that this ministry should take. That’s why it’s taken so long to get the video’s up and running, because I didn’t just want to jump and make an “Ishmael” of things, I wanted to wait upon the Lord and listen to his guiding so that I do things his way.

It all boils down to this: Building a relationship requires not just talking to someone, but listening also. So why should our relationship with God be any different?

Christian St John M.Div, BChM, ACS
May, 2009

Picture by Christopher Bruno