A Quote by Henri Nouwen
Prayer is first of all listening to God. It's openness. God is always speaking; he's always doing something.
Related Quotes
Prayer is first of all listening to God. It's openness. God is always speaking; he's always doing something. Prayer is to enter into that activity... Convert your thoughts into prayer. As we are involved in unceasing thinking, so we are called to unceasing prayer. The difference is not that prayer is thinking about other things, but that prayer is thinking in dialogue,... a conversation with God.
Prayer is speaking to God. Meditation is listening to God. Trust tranquility.
God speaks in the silence of the heart, and we listen. And then we speak to God from the fullness of our heart, and God listens. And this listening and this speaking is what prayer is meant to be.
We are always looking for signs. We are always asking for God to 'speak' to us. But those signs are all around us. They are in everything. God is always 'speaking'. The question is whether we are listening.
Just as in prayer it is not we who momentarily catch His attention, but He ours, so when we fail to hear His voice, it is not because He is not speaking so much as that we are not listening. We must recognize that all things are in God and that God is in all things, and we must learn to be very attentive, in order to bear God speaking in His ordinary tone without any special accent.
God is always present, always available. At whatever moment in which one turns to him the prayer is received, is heard, is authenticated, for it is God who gives our prayer its value and its character, not our interior dispositions, not our fervor, not our lucidity. The prayer which is pronounced for God and accepted by him becomes, by that very fact, a true prayer.
Drawing prayer circles isn’t about proving yourself to God; it’s about giving God an opportunity to prove Himself to you. Just in case you have forgotten — and to ensure that you always remember — God is for you. I can’t promise that God will always give you the answer you want. I can’t promise that He’ll answer on your timeline. But I can promise this: He answers every prayer, and He keeps every promise. That is who He is. That is what He does.
Four things let us ever keep in mind: God hears prayer, God heeds prayer, God answers prayer, and God delivers by prayer.
Jesus’ example of fidelity to prayer challenges us to examine the time and effort we devote to our own prayer. While prayer is a gift of God, it is also an art learned through constant practice. Jesus teaches us to pray constantly, but also to bear witness before others of the beauty of prayer, self-surrender and complete openness to God.
Prayer that is born of meditation upon the Word of God is the prayer that soars upward most easily to God's listening ears.
Never think that God's delays are God's denials. True prayer always receives what it asks, or something better.
What you find I think in the mystical strain of Catholicism is that you're put in relationship with God, and you have many opportunities not only of talking with God in petitionary prayer, but also of listening to God, being attentive to God, as happens in contemplation.
Some who attempt prayer never have the sense of anyone listening on the other end. They blame themselves for doing it wrong.... Prayer requires the faith to believe that God listens.
Prayer brings to us blessings which we need, and which only God can give, and which prayer can alone convey to us ... This service of prayer is not a mere rite, a ceremony through which we go, a sort of performance. Prayer is going to God for something needed and desired. Prayer is simply asking God to do for us what he has promised us he will do if we ask him ... Asking is man's part. Giving is God's part. The praying belongs to us. The answer belongs to God.
According to my definition of God, I'm not an atheist. Because I think God is everything. Whenever I open my eyes, I'm looking at God. Whenever I'm listening to something, I'm listening to God.
According to my definition of God, I'm not an atheist. Because I think God is everything. Whenever I open my eyes I'm looking at God. Whenever I'm listening to something I'm listening to God.
Related Authors
Aiden Wilson Tozer Quotes
American
Priest
Billy Graham Quotes
American
Priest
Charles Spurgeon Quotes
British
Priest
Gordon B. Hinckley Quotes
American
Priest
Henry Ward Beecher Quotes
American
Priest
Joel Osteen Quotes
American
Priest
John C. Maxwell Quotes
American
Priest
John Piper Quotes
American
Priest
Max Lucado Quotes
American
Priest
Norman Vincent Peale Quotes
American
Priest
Pema Chodron Quotes
American
Priest
Pope Benedict XVI Quotes
German
Priest
Pope Francis Quotes
Argentinian
Priest
Rajneesh Quotes
Indian
Priest
Swami Vivekananda Quotes
Indian
Priest
Thomas S. Monson Quotes
American
Priest