Listening

When our prayer life seems to go bust, or dry as a summer drought, it may be a good time to take a look at what we are putting into our prayer life.  If what we are doing is getting a result that is less than what we desire, it makes no sense to continue doing the same thing.  If we persist in rituals of the past, we should not be surprised at the same spiritual dryness.  This is not to say that the tried and true rituals of the past have no value, but is to say that we should not be afraid of something new and different.  

Something new and different might be thinking about prayer as a place for listening instead of a place for talking.  Most of us give lip service to God speaking to His people.  We read the Word as if this is a spiritual phenomena that only happened in Biblical times to people like Moses and the Apostle Paul.  Our prayers often turn into a "to do" list for God.  Seldom do we enter into our prayer moments asking God if there anything He wants to say to us.  If we do ask if He has anything for us, He will likely need to speak quickly since our attention span for listening to Him is short.   

Listening for the voice of God is not something most of us do very easily.  If we were to enter into some kind of listening experiment,  hearing His voice might be more troubling than not hearing it because hearing requires some kind of action, or change.  One thing is certain.  If we want to add a new layer of excitement to a dry prayer life, learn to listen.  It will not be easy in the beginning, but if we practice the discipline of listening, everything changes.