August
12, 2007
Learning To Listen
It is exciting to hear so many of you say how you are looking forward to
participating in one of the
upcoming “Listening Sessions.” I am looking forward to hearing from you and
to learn what you are
hearing from God about the mission and ministry of St. Mark. The scriptures
assure us that God speaks
to his
people, and that God’s children will listen for God’s voice. I am confident
that these sessions will
help
us focus on what God is calling us to do as a community of faith.
In his book, Vision and Character, Craig Dykstra acknowledges that the
practice of paying attention to
God
may be difficult for many of us. If this idea that prayer consists of
attention to God seems strange to
us,
perhaps it is because we have given up the discipline and no longer really
know how to pray. In most
of our
praying, our attention is neither focused nor on God. What we attend to is
largely our own selves,
and
this in a rather generalized and ambiguous way. Prayer, both public and
private, and particularly
among
Protestants, tends to be almost totally prayer of petition. We have some
need, and we pray that it
will
be met. We are in some trouble, and we pray that God will take it away. Even
when we do pray prayers
of
praise, thanksgiving, and confession, we do so with our attention turned to
what we are pleased with,
thankful for, and guilty of. We find it extremely difficult to allow our
praise, thanks, confession, petition,
and
intercession to be formed by attention to God, and awfully easy to allow the
God to whom we pray to
become
a mere reflection of our own concerns.... “Simple attentiveness” is most
difficult. It is also very important.
As we move through this process let me ask you to pray for me. Ask God to
help me attend to the promptings
of the
Holy Spirit as we meet in small groups all across our community. As we focus
on God, I am certain
we
will see some extraordinary results.
Ashley