Prayer is speaking to God - but sometimes He uses our times of prayerful silence to speak to us in return.
Billy GrahamRead
The prayer of listening makes things simple but it also makes us vulnerable, and that is frightening. Listening makes us open to Christ, the Word of God, spoken in all things: in the material world, the Scriptures, the Church, and sacraments and, sometimes most threateningly, in our fellow human beings. To listen at prayer is to take the chance of hearing the voice of Christ in the poor, the weak, those whom we love and those whom we do not love.
Interpretation
Listening in prayer can bring simplicity and vulnerability as we open ourselves to divine communication.
This quote emphasizes the importance of listening in prayer, suggesting that true attentiveness not only simplifies our understanding of faith but also exposes us to vulnerability. By being open to discovering the voice of Christ in various forms, including Scripture and in the marginalized, we learn to connect deeply with both the divine and our fellow humans, which can be both a profound blessing and a source of fear.
In practice
In a sermon on the importance of prayer, one might quote this to encourage deeper listening.
Prayer is speaking to God - but sometimes He uses our times of prayerful silence to speak to us in return.
Faith is to the soul what life is to the body. Prayer is to faith what breath is to the body. How a person can live and not breathe is past my comprehension, and how a person can believe and not pray is past my comprehension too.
Prayer is not logical, it is a mysterious moral working of the Holy Spirit.
In our world, where hundreds of things distract us from God, we have to intentionally and consistently remind ourselves of Him.
The most holy and necessary practice in our spiritual life is the presence of God. That means finding constant pleasure in His divine company, speaking humbly and lovingly with him in all seasons, at every moment, without limiting the conversation in any way.
If you are hungry to hear the voice of God, you will hear. To hear, you have to cut out all other things.
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