"Speak, Lord, Your Servant Is Listening"

Not

"Shut up, Lord, I'm talking right now."








     My prayers will sometime send up being one-ended monologues. 
      "Dear Lord.  Hi, it's me, Chloe.  I want this and this and this and this.  Got it?  Good.  Talk to you tomorrow.  Oh, and by the way,  why don't you ever talk to me?"
     Well, to put it bluntly, it would probably because I'm not listening.  



     So, What is prayer?


     Prayer is: "An act of communion with God, a god, or another object of worship, such as in devotion, confession, praise, or thanksgiving."  A conversation with God.
     I don't know about you, but the hardest people to talk to are those who are self-interested.  They dont' let you get in a word edge-wise and their conversations are very self-orientated.  I cannot talk to these people because it frustrates me.
     Yet what is my prayer life sometimes?  This exact thing.  I go on and on about my problems and what God should do in my life if He really loved me. 
     He really does love me already!  He always has!


    How do we love God?

     So God really loves us.  But how do you love someone back?  By knowing them.  And how do you get to know someone?  By talking to them.  Not at them.
     In order to love, serve, and be happy with God, we have to know Him.  And this comes through prayer.  And listening.




      Shh...God is trying to tell you something.

     How do we know what God wants us to do?  If you think I have all the answers, you are wrong.  If I did, I wouldn't be banging my head against the wall with my own discernment. 
     But back to the question.  If someone asks us to do something for them, what is our next step?  Listening.  We have to listen and wait for them to tell us what to do before we do it. 
     So I am reminded of 1 Kings 19:12, which says: "After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire.  And after the fire came a gentle whisper."  When someone is whispering, we listen even harder.  Thus should our prayer life be.

    
     Avoiding the Quiet Desperation

     We have to listen in our prayer life.  We have to be in tune to Christ's words in our life.  What could happen if we don't?  We abandon our true selves and thus abandon the best version of ourselves. (Matthew Kelly).  We then end up living a life of quiet desperation. (Thoreau).
      Pleasure lasts only as long as the act producing it.  So when our lives are pleasure based, they are not happiness-filled.  We begin on an endless search for the next thing to give us pleasure.  A big house, a boat, a new car, these things are never enough.  We are trying to fill a God-shaped whole in our heart with things that don't fit the shape of that hole.
     Happiness lasts longer than the act producing it.  So when our lives are filled with happiness, we are working towards pleasing God.  And by pleasing God, that happiness reflects into our own life.
     So what do we do to achieve happiness?  Listen. Listen to God!  He loves us - and like a father, He wants his children to be happy!  And He wants to share the ways to achieve happiness, if only we would listen.

     God is talking to you..are you listening to Him? 


     Thanks and God Bless you all!

Chloe M.