One of the most frequently neglected aspects of prayer for many of us is listening. I’ve often thought how strange it would seem to someone if we walked up to them, engaged in a conversation, asked them some advice about a certain challenge we were facing and then walked away. Yet, that’s exactly what I have done so often in my times of prayer with the Lord. I have engaged Him in a conversation, then told Him about a major challenge I was facing personally or in my leadership at the church, asked Him what to do and then walked away, thinking I had just engaged in a “quality” prayer time with Him.
How strange is that? I just asked the God of the universe for His help and then walked away without waiting to see what He had to say on the matter. Recognizing this as a weakness in my daily times of prayer, I committed some time ago to always include a specific time of listening when I pray. The amount of time varies. For a while I would invest at least 1/3 of the total time in prayer in listening. Right now, I’m using a variation of Dr. Dick Eastman’s “Hour That Changes the World” model of prayer, which has twelve elements, listening being one of them, so my listening time is about 10-15% of the time I’m investing in prayer. The key is: I’m listening.
Yesterday during my time of listening, God offered a phrase concerning our upcoming series: Living in the Spirit, which will be a five-week message series in June and the first week of July. The phrase was brief, but helpful–Deeper not Weirder. As I pondered the phrase throughout the day yesterday, and this morning, I kept saying, “Yes!” After all, when it comes to the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church universal we find everything from a basic non-acknowledgement the Holy Spirit is still working to a radical weirdness that scares most of us. I wouldn’t say God was calling me to “balance” when it comes to the Holy Spirit, but that as we present the messages we are to focus on a deeper relationship with God in our lives through the ongoing presence and power of the Holy Spirit.
Listening isn’t easy for me, but it always has some important result. Many times I don’t hear or receive anything other than the sense of God being with me. That’s enough when it happens, because it reminds me God is with me. At other times, God has given me the seed of a message or teaching, or a prompt to visit a person or an affirmation of a direction I was already heading, or a command to stop going in a specific direction. In my entire life, God has spoken to me in an audible voice only a couple times. He has spoken clearly to me many times. The key commonality in those times is: I was listening.
I remember many years ago when I was driving home from a leadership conference led by John Windber. All day long he had been saying, “God told me…” “God directed me…” “God guided me…” I was reflecting on all the times he had made such statements through the day, and I said, “God, why don’t you talk to me like that?”
As clearly as God has ever told me anything, He said, “Because you don’t listen.” Whoa. That set me back. I realized it was far too true. I was so “busy” doing the Lord’s work, that I often shot up prayers throughout the day, and then went and did something about whatever it was I had just asked the Lord for wisdom, guidance or help. Seldom did I stop to listen.
In that moment I said, “Okay, I’m listening now.” In the next five minutes or so, God gave me three specific instructions. Each of them related to a man who was part of the church I was serving at the time. It was nearly 10:00 pm, but I drove to his house. When I knocked on the door, and he came to answer it, I told him this was going to sound strange, but that God had given me three messages to give to him. As I spoke the messages–all of which have happened over the years–the man started crying. He told me he had been angry at God and that although everyone thought he was a believer, he had never trusted Jesus as his Savior and Lord. He committed his life to Jesus in that moment, and has served him faithfully ever since.
You would think that would have been enough to cause me to invest time every day listening to God, but it wasn’t. I have invested a good deal of time in listening over the years, but the answers have seldom been so immediate, clear and compelling. Recently, I realized once again that as a leader of a large and growing church, the most pressing need in my life is to be listening to the God who put me in the position. I need to stop and listen daily. Thankfully, God is extremely patient and has been honoring my renewed commitment to listen, by guiding me more and more.
Where are you when it comes to listening in prayer? Are you intentional about listening to God when you pray? Do you turn to Him in exasperation at times and ask, “Why don’t you speak to me like you do ________?” Do you even believe God is still speaking or is there to speak? These are vital questions, and how we answer them will determine how close our relationship and union with God becomes. After all, it’s tough to have a one-way relationship. Take a moment sometime today, or more than a moment and listen. God is still speaking…
Here’s to leading better by listening to God when we pray–today!