Prayer: Telling God What to Do ... or Listening for God?
Scripture
tell us to bring requests to God, but the first task of praying is listening.
Article appeared in the June 14, 2004 edition of
SoulWork.
By Jeanie Miley
Time was when I had little trouble
making my prayer list. I knew exactly how to pray for a loved one
or a project. Intercession, supplication and petition were easy.
In my prayer journals, it was really something to check off the
answered prayers each week. “Isn’t God good?” we would all say to each other
when God came through for us. I shudder when I remember that people would
say, “Maybe we didn’t have enough faith” or “Perhaps we didn’t pray hard
enough” when things didn’t turn out quite like we were sure they would.
With years of practicing various forms of contemplative prayer
and, most consistently, centering prayer, talking to God has become more
rare for me. I don’t find it quite so easy to hand God His to-do list
these days. Now, I am hesitant to box God in to my limited and limiting vision
of how things should be.
Waiting on God: The Great Demand
It was the day I heard a very wise man say that he dared not make
a petition or intercession unless he had spent a great deal of time listening
for God and to God in the silence that my prayer life took a radical
turn. On that day, I came face to face with the possibility that there
was a kind of arrogance in my imposing my agenda on the Holy One by telling Him
what to do.
We are counseled by scripture to bring our requests to God, but
the first task of praying is, in fact, to listen, and then listen some more
until we become attuned to the still, small voice of God.
I’ve learned that it really does make a difference in my prayer
life when I spend enough time in a quiet, receptive and open mode in order to
discern the ways and the will of God. I have learned that it is a lot more
important that I do what God wants me to do than for me to pray hard enough
to get God to do my will!
Letting Go and Letting God: The Requirement of Prayer
Sometimes, it is hard for those of us who are programmed to make
things happen to learn how to let things happen. It is a challenge
for those of us who are accustomed to being in control of things to learn how
to cooperate with God. For those of us who are about getting things done fast
and efficiently, it is a stretch to learn to wait on God, to be patient until
the fullness of time comes and to step back and allow processes to work out in
their own sequence.
We who spend our lives and earn our livings in the material world,
manipulating numbers and objects, adding up columns and bringing forth
tangible, measurable results are ultimately brought to our knees by the Unseen
Hand at work. We who are programmed to achieve, accomplish and acquire
are humbled before the Mystery, whose agenda may be completely opposite our
ego’s.
I still pray for my children and my friends. I still assault
the heavens with my pleas for mercy and for help. I will always come as a
little child with my needs and my wants, at least for now.
More and more, however, I sit or stand in awe, rendered speechless
by the Presence of God and the power of God’s love. It is then that my
prayer for my deepest concerns and my dearest loved ones is simply, “Your will
be done.”
Having basked in the Presence, I am then able to leave the
details up to God.
And surely, God is relieved when I do that!
Jeanie Miley is the author of three books, Becoming Fire,
Christheart, and her latest, Ancient Psalms for Contemporary Pilgrims. To order
a copy of one of Miley's titles from Smyth & Helwys, visit this link. E-mail Jeanie Miley.