Sermons

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Listening in Prayer
April 28, 2002
Third in a sermon series on prayer
Associate Pastor Lynne Baab

Texts: Mark 1:35-39 and Hebrews 4:14-16

Recently I was reading a Christian book. In a section on loneliness, the author was trying to explain the basics of the Christian life so that a lonely person might find companionship with God. I came across one sentence that stopped me in my tracks. It went like this: “Prayer is us talking to God, and the Bible is God talking to us.”

I realized that earlier in my life I would have agreed with that statement. In fact, I might have said it! But in the past decade, I have been learning to listen to God in prayer. And I have been using the prayers in the Bible to pray to God. So, sometimes, prayer is God talking to me, and sometimes the Bible is me talking to God.

I chose Hebrews 4:14-16 as a text for today because of the way my perceptions of that passage have changed, too. The writer of Hebrews says that we are to approach the throne of grace boldly to receive mercy and grace in our time of need. In years past, I obeyed this passage like this: I would come to God in prayer, telling him my needs. I would expect that he would give me mercy and grace in the days to come.

I still pray that way a lot, but in addition, there are now times that I actually receive the mercy and grace I need as I am praying. God actually speaks mercy and grace to me as I pray, and I end the prayer time with what I need.

Our topic today is listening in prayer, and as I thought about that sentence I read in the book and the way I am learning to listen to God, I decided to tell you five brief stories that illustrate listening in prayer. These stories are not exhaustive in any way. They don’t say everything about listening in prayer, but they do give a flavor of the ways different people listen to God. After I tell the stories, I want to discuss some of the obstacles to listening to God.

My first story comes from the life of Bruce Murphy. Many of you will remember Bruce. He was the senior pastor here from 1990 to 1997. During his years here, his prayer life changed. He talked several times about the change. Formerly, he spent quiet time each morning reading the Bible and praying. In his prayers, he would tell God about his concerns and about the people he had on his mind.

Some time during his years at Bethany, he got involved in contemplative prayer, which focuses more on listening to God. He changed what he did each morning. Now he spends time in silence before God, waiting to be reassured that he is loved.

He talked about the effect this kind of prayer had on his days. Without listening for God’s love, he was busy all day, motivated out of pressure, sometimes guilt, sometimes the need to earn God’s love. He said that on the days he listened for God’s love, he was equally busy, but somehow things were different. He did things out of a sense of grace and gratitude, rather than needing to prove anything to anyone.

If I had to choose one word to describe this kind of listening, I would choose “love,” listening for God’s love for us, listening to know that we don’t have to do anything to earn God’s love.

My second story comes from the Gospel passage in Mark chapter one. This is right at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, and he has been busy all day in Capernaum healing people and performing miracles. He goes to sleep and gets up early the next morning to go off and pray. His disciples get up later and wonder where he is. They search him out, because the people in Capernaum want him to come back and do some more healing.

When they find him, they tell him, “Come on back, everyone wants you, you’re needed in Capernaum.” He says to them, “No, we’re not going back. We’ll go on to the other villages to proclaim the gospel. That’s what I was sent here for.”

I have always believed that in that quiet prayer in the morning, Jesus got a sense of purpose for his day, as well as an overarching sense of renewed purpose for his life. If I had to choose one word for this story, I would choose “purpose.” Sometimes in prayer, God gives us guidance for the day, sometimes a sense of purpose for our whole life, and sometimes both.

My third story comes from my own life, a time when I was the beneficiary of someone else listening to God. A couple of years ago I was very sick. I ended up getting completely well, but there were a couple weeks when the doctors were talking about a fatal illness. I was very fearful.

One morning, in the midst of those two bad weeks, an old friend called. She was once a very close friend, but our lives have moved in different directions and we now see each other every two or three years. She said, “When I woke up this morning, you were on my mind. I couldn’t stop thinking about you, so I decided to pray for you. As I was praying, God told me to call you. So here I am. I don’t know why I’m calling.”

I said, “I know why!” We had a great conversation, and it was wonderful to have someone to talk to. But even more significant than the good conversation was the sense of God’s care for me that came through loud and clear. God cared so much for me in my illness that he would speak to my old friend about me.

If I had to choose one word for this story, it would be “care,” God calling us to show care for people. This is the way God speaks to me the most: call this person, write a card, send an e-mail, pray for this person now. Sometimes God nudges us to show love and care for someone in a specific way.

My fourth and fifth stories come from the life of my husband, Dave. He very graciously allowed me to tell these stories. One of them happened just a couple weeks ago. Dave was awakened from a sound sleep with the sense that God was telling him he was doing something wrong. God seemed to give a name to this thing, and then seemed to be saying that Dave needed to apologize for it and stop doing it.

If I had to give a name to this, I would call it “conviction,” God speaking to us about sin in our life. I wanted to include this story to illustrate something else, too. We often view prayer as a conversation with God. We start the conversation, and if we are blessed, God will speak to us. Sometimes, however, God is the one who starts the conversation, as is evident from what happened to Dave. After God spoke to Dave, he began to pray about the thing God was speaking to him about. That prayer was a conversation initiated by God.

My last story dates from 1996, when Dave’s dad was dying of liver cancer. He lived in Ohio, and it was hard to know when Dave should go there. His dad was diagnosed with cancer at the beginning of the summer and we prayed all summer that Dave would know when to go.

In mid-August, his dad went into a coma. These comas can last a long time or a short time, so we still didn’t know when Dave should go. His dad went into the coma on a Saturday, and on the following Wednesday, Dave was at his morning men’s group, the same group he’d been meeting with for year. As they were praying together at the end of their time together, Dave got the strong sense that he was supposed to go to Ohio NOW.

I was at home that day, and while he packed, I called the airlines. He was on a plane by 11 am and got to his small town in Ohio at 11 pm. He spent a couple hours with his dad, then went to sleep for a while. The next day he sat with his dad all day, and his dad died at 11 pm that night.

Those 24 hours with his dad were one of the great gifts of his life. He and his father were very close, and, even though his dad was in a coma, Dave got to sit beside him, sing to him, pray with him, read the Bible to him, and talk to him. Dave held his hand when he died, and sat there long enough for his hand to become cold. God was so gracious to Dave to speak to him and tell him to go.

That’s the word I would use to summarize this kind of speaking by God: “go.” Sometimes God gives us specific instructions of something to do.

So those are my five stories: love, purpose, care, conviction, and go. Again, this is not an exhaustive list of all the ways God works, but just some pictures of the varieties of ways he speaks.

I can identify for you a number of obstacles to hearing God speak to us. We may wonder if people will think we’re crazy if God speaks to us. We may have a hard time making the time to sit and listen for God to speak to us every morning, as Bruce Murphy described. And we may fear that when we hear something, it won’t really be God who’s speaking.

I want to talk briefly about this last obstacle. It is a real fear and a serious question. How can I know when it’s God who is speaking to me?

When you have a sense of being loved by God, I can assure you that can only come from God. Only God can communicate deep, unconditional love to us. When you feel nudged to provide care for someone, whether it’s a visit or a card or a phone call, I think you can be pretty sure that’s God. God’s heart longs for us to express care to others.

When you experience conviction about an area of your life where you are falling short, you can be pretty sure that’s God, too. The only exception would be if you’re the kind of person who is always feeling guilty. Then maybe your feelings of conviction are coming from your own overactive conscience rather than God. God wants us to experience conviction, then experience the joy of forgiveness.

It gets more complicated when we talk about God communicating purpose to us. If you were praying and got a sense that God was telling you that your purpose in life is to get very rich through running a drug smuggling ring, I would have to say that is not God’s voice. How can we tell? The first place we look when evaluating whether or not something comes from God is whether or not it’s consistent with the Bible. God’s voice to us will always be consistent with the Bible.

When we hear God say “go” to us, we also have to ask whether that is God’s voice or not. If I hear a voice telling me to go to the mall and buy everything I have ever desired, I can be pretty sure that voice is coming from my own desires and not God.

Hearing God’s voice, and being sure it’s God, becomes easier with practice. And when we obey what we hear, we are more likely to hear something else. So if you want to learn to discern God’s voice speaking to you, try to obey it when you do hear it. And that includes listening to and believing God’s words of love for us. Sometimes that’s the hardest thing to believe!

Another obstacle to hearing God’s voice is a kind of anger. It goes like this: “God, I’ve been praying for months about whether or not to quit my job and go back to school. You never answer me, month after month! And now you’re telling me to go across the street and meet my new neighbors? Why should I listen to you tell me this, when you won’t tell me what I want and need to hear?”

We are so dictatorial! We think we can dictate to God the ways he will speak to us. I did a little informal poll this week. I asked people if they more often hear God speak to them in answer to things they’ve been asking him or if they hear him speak to them on unexpected topics in unexpected ways. Everyone I asked agreed that God most often speaks in ways that we can’t and don’t anticipate.

I want to go back to Hebrews 4 in closing. We do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin. Therefore, we can draw near to God with confidence. We don’t have to fear that God will speak to us and tell us something so horrible and awful that we won’t be able to stand it. This high priest we approach in prayer is someone who understands exactly what we’re going through and will speak to us in just the way that we need to hear. It might not be what we expect. In fact, it probably won’t be what we expect. But it will come from someone who knows us and loves us.