Tuesday, April 23, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Descend into the heart
My sheep hear my voice, says the Lord. I know them, and they follow me.
I think of prayer as talking to God. But Jesus speaks of it as “hearing his voice.” We speak in prayer, and God speaks to us. So listening is as important as speaking when we pray. Inner silence is a pre-condition of listening. But inner silence is difficult to achieve. Henri Nouwen spent an hour each day in silence, and he called it prayer.
The quiet repetition of a single word can help us to descend with the mind into the heart. This repetition has nothing to do with magic. It’s not meant to throw a spell on God or to force him into hearing us. On the contrary, a word or sentence repeated frequently can help us to concentrate, to move to the center, to create an inner stillness, and thus to listen to the voice of God.
When we simply try to sit silently and wait for God to speak to us, we find ourselves bombarded with endless conflicting thoughts and ideas. But when we repeat a very simple sentence such as “O God, come to my assistance,” or “Jesus, master, have mercy on me,” or a word such as “Lord” or “Jesus” it is easier to let the many distractions pass by without being misled by them.
Such a simple, easily repeated prayer can slowly empty out our crowded interior life and create the quiet space where we can dwell with God. It can be like a ladder along which we can descend into the heart and ascend to God.
In my prayer it’s more important to listen than to speak, because God is worth listening to. I would rather listen than speak most of the time, actually, and when I listen to God I realize very quickly that what Derek Prince said about Him is true:
God loves you more than you love yourself. Second, God knows you better than you know yourself. And third, God wants only the best for you. – Secrets of a Prayer Warrior, p. 29
Because God loves me so much, Jesus says that I can trust him. And when I do, he will listen to me and speak to me and I will have found what I’ve been born for.
No one can take my sheep out of the Father’s hand.
In Revelation, John says that “Jesus has made us a kingdom of priests for God his Father (Rev 1:6). But I am not much of a priest when I listen more to my own thoughts than I do to God. As I follow Nouwen’s suggestion of repeating a single word, I begin to listen differently. I remember more quickly that God is near, and that the thread of our relationship is stable on his end, even if I break it over and over on my end.
As we realize this intimacy with God, God shows us how to live and what to do in the world he’s given us. For the first time in our lives, perhaps, there’s enough time for all of it. There is no hurry. There is always more than enough.
 (Acts 11, Psalm 87, John 10)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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