{"id":3823,"date":"2013-02-25T12:05:18","date_gmt":"2013-02-25T12:05:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/?p=3823"},"modified":"2018-07-20T18:20:43","modified_gmt":"2018-07-20T18:20:43","slug":"hearing-god-speak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/2013\/02\/hearing-god-speak.html","title":{"rendered":"Hearing God Speak"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Lately, God\u00a0has been talking to me about what it means to hear God speak.<\/p>\n<p>First, there was Stanford anthropologist TM Luhrmann&#8217;s article, which begged my initial question in <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/2013\/02\/evangelicals-god-talk-and-hearing-voices.html\">Friday&#8217;s post<\/a>: what does it mean to <em>hear <\/em>God speak?<\/p>\n<p>Then there was Sunday&#8217;s\u00a0sermon by Thomas Daniel- all about how learning to hear God&#8217;s voice is, arguably, a primary reason for church.\u00a0 (Once that sermon is available online, I will post it here for you.)<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday evening I stumbled upon these words from the former Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey, who when once asked how to pray said this:<a href=\"http:\/\/dish.andrewsullivan.com\/2013\/02\/24\/no-wrong-way-to-pray\/\"> &#8220;I just get down on my knees and hope for the best<\/a>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>By Ramsey&#8217;s definition, I suspect many of this year&#8217;s Oscar nominees and their\u00a0ogling\u00a0fans\u00a0were &#8220;praying&#8221; in the days leading up to last night&#8217;s ceremony.<\/p>\n<p>But in unpacking Ramsey&#8217;s understanding of prayer, Giles Fraser elaborates:\u00a0 &#8220;In other words, there is not much that you have to do [to pray] other than make time for [prayer]. For Ramsey,\u00a0prayer was not the heaping up of pious chatter. It was not a peculiar way of getting things done in the world. <em>Rather, it was about listening and waiting<\/em> \u2013 <em>being attentive to that which is\u00a0beyond oneself, a form of concentration on that which is other (italics mine).&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Hearing God presupposes that something Other than our own internal chatter and the daily distractions of our media-saturated world can break into our lives and call us out of ourselves even as it grounds us more deeply in Love.\u00a0 My own experience has been that when I come to God with this presupposition, God does in fact &#8220;speak&#8221; to me.\u00a0 Images, visions,\u00a0and phrases\u00a0reveal themselves within this tent of listening prayer.\u00a0 So do interactions with other people, which seem to become more vividly in the service of Love, whereas before they might have been only mundane transactions of sorts.<\/p>\n<p>I think C.S. Lewis is\u00a0right when he says prayer is almost\u00a0more important for how it changes the one praying than the one being prayed for; but that change takes place more in the act of listening to God rather than talking back.<\/p>\n<p><em>But what is your experience of listening to God? How does God speak to you?\u00a0 Can you identify with Ramsey&#8217;s definition of prayer as &#8220;getting down on one&#8217;s knees and hoping for the best&#8221;?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; Lately, God\u00a0has been talking to me about what it means to hear God speak. First, there was Stanford anthropologist TM Luhrmann&#8217;s article, which begged my initial question in Friday&#8217;s post: what does it mean to hear God speak? Then there was Sunday&#8217;s\u00a0sermon by Thomas Daniel- all about how learning to hear God&#8217;s voice is,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":461,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[119,68,43,233],"tags":[1588,1585,1587,1586,1584,1583,363],"class_list":["post-3823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church","category-grace","category-humor","category-prayer","tag-giles-fraser","tag-hearing-god","tag-lectio-divina","tag-lenten-discipline","tag-oscar-ceremony","tag-oscar-nominees","tag-prayers-for-strength"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Hearing God Speak - Fellowship of Saints and Sinners<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/2013\/02\/hearing-god-speak.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Hearing God Speak - Fellowship of Saints and Sinners\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"&nbsp; Lately, God\u00a0has been talking to me about what it means to hear God speak. First, there was Stanford anthropologist TM Luhrmann&#8217;s article, which begged my initial question in Friday&#8217;s post: what does it mean to hear God speak? Then there was Sunday&#8217;s\u00a0sermon by Thomas Daniel- all about how learning to hear God&#8217;s voice is,&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/2013\/02\/hearing-god-speak.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Fellowship of Saints and Sinners\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/kristina.robbdover\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-02-25T12:05:18+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2018-07-20T18:20:43+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Kristina Robb-Dover\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@saintplussinner\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@saintplussinner\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Hearing God Speak - Fellowship of Saints and Sinners","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/2013\/02\/hearing-god-speak.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Hearing God Speak - Fellowship of Saints and Sinners","og_description":"&nbsp; Lately, God\u00a0has been talking to me about what it means to hear God speak. 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