Chapter 2 - the prayer of quiet and listening to God

Hello, Companion Mustard Seed Library book readers,

This also is an interesting chapter. Seems like everywhere we turn we are reminded of the necessity to listen to God. Pastor Eggleston said it on Tuesday at the meeting at the church. How often does the church listen to God and how much of our struggles stem from actually not doing this listening? The daily scripture from Miriam Woolbert of the ELCA, today's scripture, is Colossians 1:15-23 "He (Jesus) is the image of the invisible God....and in him all things hold together....he is the beginning....so that he might come to have first place in everything."

The author writes "We must pray, then for GOD'S will to be done; and to find out what He wants, we must ask Him. But another question quickly arises: When we ask God to reveal His will and we hear an answer within us, how do we know whether we have heard God's voice? Could this not be our own thought?"

The author gives a list of possibly what could be the voices of our own thought: "There is the child's voice, the voice of the law-giver, the practical voice; there is a guilty voice, an optimistic voice, a fearful voice; there is the voice of the trickster, the voice of wisdom, the voice of selfishness; and the list could go on and on." For me, a person who believes in miracles but still struggles with my own practical voice that who knows how often in my lifespan already my own practical voice has put obstacles in the way of God's Will being done in my life or in the life of others or even in the life of the church. So anyway, the author suggests readers start out, in this wanting to listen to God, by praying the prayer of quiet. At least 20 minutes, maybe 3 times a week, sitting comfortably and relaxed in a chair, breathing slowly and regularly, taking attention away from the body to fully concentrate mind and spirit, praying a short, slow, and constantly repeated "Abba" or "Father" or Jesus" or "Lord, have mercy" or "Come, Lord Jesus" or any other short prayer that might resonate within us as a prayer we could pray sincerely. Or maybe the ancient prayer of the Eastern Church "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me, a sinner." The author further states "The specific words themselves matter little. What does matter is the one element that all these prayers have in common: They focus our attention entirely outside of ourselves and onto God, with Whom we want to commune." I remember Pastor Troike leading us in Centering Prayer too after he came back from his sabbatical. Further the author says that probably, as we are praying this prayer of quiet, that there will be distractions, which is good but that by returning constantly back to "Abba" or "Father" or "Jesus" or "Lord, have mercy" or "Come, Lord Jesus" or "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me a sinner" "when we think about what we are saying, trying to stretch ourselves and reach out to touch God--not that we WILL touch God; but if we reach out for Him long enough He will touch us!"

Actually the last sentence is the one that bothers me a little. But I sort of resolve it by reasoning that anyone who is reaching out for Him in anyway has already been touched by God and now is just looking for the ways to "have the conversation with Him". The conversation and ways of conversing are bound to be always personal I think but hearing other people share their prayer experiences is like what happens in corporate prayer, we are binded together more and more in mutual giving and receiving community as children of God. So far, it seems everything the author is writing about he has himself experienced and found helpful for healing and wholeness, spiritually and otherwise.

This is way too long of a blog entry but listening to God is intensely interesting to me. And maybe to you too.
God bless,
Sharon