Paying Attention to God in Your Life - Ministry Exchange (MX)

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Paying Attention to God Our Lives There is no event so common place but that God is present within it, always hidden, always leaving you room to recognize Him or not to recognize Him, but all the more fascinatingly because of that, all the more compelling and haunting. listen to you life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and in the pain of it—no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace. —From Now and Then by Fredrick Buechner This time of prayer is designed to give you some time — to STOP – to be quiet – to have some S P A C E to listen to you life.

It is a time to consider, look and listen to what God has been up to over
the last twenty-four hours, the last week or the last few months.

God Our Lover You draw us to search for you; You give us clues to your presence in creation. We find you in each others faces each, in the challenge and intimacy of human love. Yet always you elude our grasp; familiar yet always strange, you both comfort and disturb our lives. We surrender all our images of you, And offer ourselves to your darkness; that you may enable us to Become your likeness More than we can imagine or conceive. —From Celebrating Women by Janet Morley

Read, Listen to and Pray Psalm 139 (You might try reading the psalm two or
three times-letting it soak in.)

An Examined Life Yahweh, you examine me and know me, You know when I sit and when I rise, You understand my thought from afar You watch when walk or lie down You know every detail of my conduct. Ps 139.1-3 Jerusalem Bilble

Recall the recent past: Spend the majority of your time prayerfully
jounaling, or thinking through, the events of the last few days, weeks,
months. Seek the answer to this one question:

How has God been present in your walking and lying down and what is he saying to you? —In the events of your life. —In the fears, joys or doubts that have preoccupied your heart and mind. —In attitudes that have been present. —In hunches or curiosities you have had… —In the things that have occupied or pre-occupied your imagination. —Maybe even in a dream that stands out to you for some reason.

If you need help here are some questions which may spur you on. (Don’t
answer them all pick a couple that open up the past to you.)

* What were moments of grace, hope, love, mystery, judgment, truth, hope, forgiveness, exposure in the recent past that I need to revisit or reconsider? * In what ways was I able to bring the light of Christ into the various parts of my life today and yesterday? * Did I fail to show His loving spirit, compassion and light? Why? What was going on that made this difficult? * How do I feel about myself? How do I feel about my world? * Were there specific events that stand out which helped me understand who I am as a follower of Christ? Who others are? Who God is? * Is there a conversation or event that you feel that you need to revisit or look at more carefully? Do you have unresolved feelings about what someone said or did? Have you been continuing a conversation with someone in your mind? What might God be asking you to consider through this conversation or event? * Was there a time when you felt strong emotion (joy, hurt, anger, concern, disappointment, pride)? Why might these emotions have surfaced? What is their meaning? * Are there things you would like to say to God in response? Questions? Thank-yous? Explanations? * Are there things/events/people you need to mourn? * Are things things/events/people you need to celebrate?

Conclude with Psalm 19 (Again, read it slowly and prayerfully a couple of
times.)

Selected Readings: Hymn “I Need Thee Every Hour” I need Thee every hour Most gracious Lord; No tender voice like Thine Can peace afford. I need Thee every hour; Stay Thou nearby. Temptations lose their pow’r When Thou art nigh. I need Thee every hour, In joy or pain; Come quickly and abide, Or life is vain. I need Thee every hour, Most Holy One. Oh, make me Thine indeed, Thou blessed Son! I need Thee; oh, I need Thee! Every hour I need Thee! Oh, bless me now, my Savior; I come to Thee! A. S. Hawks

It seems to me,... that if God speaks to us at all in this world, if he
speaks anywhere, it is into our personal lives that he speaks. Someone we
love dies, say. Some unforeseen act of kindness or cruelty touches the
heart or makes the blood run cold. We fail a friend, or a friend fails us,
and we are appalled at the capacity we all of us have for estranging the
very people in our lives we need the most. Or maybe nothing ordinary
happens at all—just one day following another, helter-skelter, in the
manner of days. We sleep and dream. We wake. We work. We remember, we
forget. We have fun and are depressed. And into the thick of it, or out
of the thick of it, at moments of even the most humdrum of our days, God
speaks…

He speaks not just through the sounds we hear, of course, but through
events in all their complexity and variety, through the harmonies and
disharmonies and counterpoint of all that happens. As to the meaning of
what he says, there are times when we apt to think we know. Adolph Hitler
dies a suicide in his bunker with the Third Reich going up in flames all
around him, and what God is saying about the wages of sin seems clear
enough. Or Albert Schweitzer renounces fame as a theologian and musician
for a medical mission in Africa, where he ends up even more famous still as
one of the great near saints of Protestantism; and again we are tempted to
see God’s meaning as clarity itself. But what is God saying through a good
man’s suicide? What about the danger of the proclaimed saint’s becoming a
kind of religious prima donna as proud of his own humility as a peacock of
its tail? What about sin itself as a means of grace? What about grace,
when misappropriated and misunderstood, becoming an occasion for sin? To
try to express in even the most insightful and theologically sophisticated
terms the meaning of what God speaks through the events of our lives is as
precarious a business as to try to express the meaning of the sound of rain
on the roof or the spectacle of the setting sun. But I choose to believe
that he speaks none the less, and the reason that his words are impossible
to capture in human language is of course that they are ultimately always
incarnate words. They are words fleshed out in the everydayness no less
than in the cries of our own experience.

—From The Sacred Journey by Frederick Beuchner 1. Without knowledge of self there is no knowledge of God Nearly all
the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of
two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But, while joined by many
bonds, which one precedes and brings forth the other is not easy to
discern. In the first place, no one can look upon himself without
immediately turning his thoughts to the contemplation of God, in whom he
“lives and moves” [Acts 17:28]. For, quite clearly, the mighty gifts with
which we are endowed are hardly from ourselves; indeed, our very being is
nothing but subsistence in the one God.

Then, by these benefits shed like dew from heaven upon us, we are led as by
rivulets to the spring itself. . . . Accordingly, the knowledge of
ourselves arouses us to seek God, but also, as it were leads us by the hand
to find him.

2. Without knowledge of God there is no knowledge of self Again, it is
certain that man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself’ unless he has
first looked upon God’s face, and then descends from contemplating him to
scrutinize himself. —From The Institutes of Religion by John Calvin

The busier life is the more need there is for a still center, a place deep
within us to which we can withdraw after the day-to-day buffeting and
storms: a place where we can mull over events and savour them more fully, a
place where above all, we can listen … to what others are saying verbally
or non-verbally, to what our feelings and fears are saying to us, and to
what God is saying through circumstances, through people, through creation
and his word spoken in the, depth of our being

—From Jesus Man of Prayer by Sister Margaret Madalen

How, then, shall we lay hold of that Life and Power (the life of following
God), and live the life of prayer without ceasing? By quiet, persistent
practice in turning of all our being, day and night, in prayer and inward
worship and surrender, toward Him who calls in the deeps of our souls.
Mental habits of inward orientation must be established. An inner, secret
turning to God can be made fairly steady, after weeks and months and years
of practice and lapses and failures and returns. It is as simple an art .
. . , but it may be long before we achieve any steadiness in the process.
Begin now, as you read these words, as you sit in your chair, to offer your
whole selves, utterly and in joyful abandon, in quiet, glad surrender to
Him who is within.

—From A Testament of Devotion by Thomas R. Kelly

This is a simple daily exercise of paying attention to God’s activity in
your life.

Ignatian Daily Examination of Conscience

An important Spiritual Discipline is to take a few moments at the end of
each day and recall where you saw God’s gracious activity in your life in
the day. This is an ancient and simple method of helping you call to mind
what you have seen, heard, understood, tasted and touched of God in the day
that is drawing to a close. It is a way to help you pay attention.

Take the last few minutes of your day – as you lie in bed – or as you kneel
to play before going to bed and .

1. Thank God for the gift of life this day and for all the blessings of
life.

2. Ask for grace and guidance to recognize His work in your life this day
and to see your transgressions and sin.

3. Slowly review the day—hour by hour, in sections of the day – morning, afternoon and evening or interaction by interaction etc.. Don’t
be too obsessive!

* Wherever you saw God in your day – say “thank you”. * Wherever you were sinful or non-responsive to His presence – say “I am sorry”.

4. Finally, ask for God’s grace of healing in one particular area in which
you need transformation. It would be best if this was the same thing night
after night—this will keep you attentive to His work in this area and
will keep you focused.

This should not take you more that a few minutes. If things come up which
you want to explore more thoroughly – write them down and prayerfully
explore them in the morning.