Think of these more as guidelines than as rules:įirst, they are short. But in my experience as a spiritual director these words or phrases often share certain characteristics. How can we be sure that these words are coming from God and are not simply something we have manufactured? Well, we can never be 100 percent sure. How can we be sure that these words are coming from God and are not simply something we have manufactured? When speaking to my friend, I mentioned an observation by Vinita Hampton Wright, author of several books on spirituality: God’s voice, she once wrote, has the “ring of truth.” It sounds like something God or Jesus would say. I do recognize a voice other than my own, but it doesn’t come through my ears. What did he want from me? And I heard him succinctly answer, “Your prayers and attention.” “Hearing” is problematic in such instances, as you know. Again, that “hearing” is not audible, but akin to recalling a line from a song or poem the words just arrive and are felt or intuited.Īfter we returned to the United States, when asked, my fellow pilgrim wrote me about that experience: In the Garden of Gethsemane, I was aware of Jesus’ suffering and told him that I was often asking for things from him. The next day, on the bus another pilgrim told me that he had “heard” words in his prayer while our group was praying silently in the Garden of Gethsemane. Those words seemed to invite me to ask this question: “What is that problem when compared to your relationship with Jesus?” Likewise, what is that small problem compared to my vocation, which seemed spread before me, like the view of the Sea of Galilee, flushed in soft pink tones as the sun rose? What indeed was any problem compared to what Jesus offers? The words seemed blunt and direct, like many of Jesus’ words in the Gospels. ![]() ![]() Maybe because I was just starting my prayer, I was still free and unself-conscious. God’s voice, Vinita Hampton Wright once wrote, has the “ring of truth.” It sounds like something God or Jesus would say. Within just a few seconds of bringing Jesus to mind and thinking about this problem, these words came to me: “What is that to me?” I decided to bring my cares to Jesus directly, as I gazed upon the ruins of Capernaum on the shoreline beneath me. One morning, I rose early to watch the sun rise over the Sea of Galilee. Likewise, once on a group pilgrimage to the Holy Land, I was struggling with a difficult problem. Many years ago, my mother told me that she was looking out the window of her house and asked God, “Do you love me?” Into her mind came the words “More than you can know.” God can do this whenever God wants, but we are not always open enough to hear God so directly. ![]() To be clear, it is not that God can only do this when we are open. Our desire for an answer usually gets in the way.īut occasionally we are free enough that God enters our consciousness with words or phrases that startle in their immediacy. Overall, we are usually not free enough to allow God to speak to us in that way. If we are seeking an answer to a specific question, like “Should I move to a new job?” we might be tempted to manufacture an answer (“Did I hear a yes?”), which would be incorrect to attribute to God. Our desire for an answer usually gets in the way.Īlso, if we open ourselves to words, we can end up talking to ourselves. We are usually not free enough to allow God to speak to us in words. If we are thinking about God’s communicating with us in prayer, why wouldn’t God use words from time to time? Perhaps it does not happen frequently because even during prayer most of us are too self-aware to allow something as concrete as words to freely enter our heads. ![]() It may be rare, but perhaps not surprising. This has happened enough times in my life, the lives of friends and the lives of those who see me for spiritual direction that I trust it as authentic.īut it is rarer than experiencing the other fruits of prayer, for example, emotions, insights, memories, desires, physical feelings and images. To be clear: I’m not talking about hearing words in a physical way but rather intuiting them, having them enter your consciousness. Not every word or phrase that pops into your head while you are praying is coming from God, however. Words and phrases can sometimes arise in our prayer. This article is excerpted from Learning to Pray: A Guide for Everyone, now released in paperback.
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