"Speak Lord, Your Servant is Listening" Part 5

This is the final part in the five-part series by Father Gerard Beigel, S.T.

Questions for Reflection

Does your prayer time include time to listen to God?
Does your lifestyle and schedule give you time to hear God’s quiet, still voice?
Do you bring only your wants to God? Do you approach Him with the reverence of Samuel, “speak, Lord, your servant is listening”?
Think of a time when something in creation opened your heart to the majesty of God. Ask the Lord to help you see how this experience can strengthen your faith in Jesus Christ.
Prayerfully read St. Stephen’s summary of salvation history in Acts 7:1–53. What is God speaking to you through these words?
God reveals himself most fully in His Son, Jesus Christ. What do the following hymns reveal to you about the Father, Son and Holy Spirit: John 1:1–18; Colossians 1:15–20.
Sin wounds our ability to hear God. Is a regular examination of conscience part of your daily prayer?
Jesus told us to “ask, seek, and knock.” What is the next step God is asking you to take in your life so that you may grow closer to Him?

A second obstacle to hearing God is when we prefer “spiritual experiences” to the full knowledge and love of God. The work of God’s revelation within us always takes us from immaturity to maturity. The work of revelation in us always propels us forward to the goal of full surrender and union with God. But people often slowly turn away from God when experiences of blessings fade away and they experience a time of dryness and purification in “the desert.” Those who persevere are purified and begin to love God with a deeper and purer love. But those who fail to persevere end up preferring past experiences from God over God Himself. This condition is clearly an obstacle to receiving God’s deeper revelation. To be open continuously to God’s revelation, we always need to move toward the goal and not hold on to experiences on the way to the goal.

A third obstacle to receiving God’s revelation is when we do not pay attention to the things He has revealed to us in the past. A common example of this is when God calls us to change our behavior—for instance, calling a man to begin praying every day. If that man makes only a token effort and does not follow God’s directive, why would God reveal anything more to him? How can we expect to receive further revelation from God when we don’t carry out the first things He reveals to us and asks of us?

A final obstacle to God’s revelation is very subtle but effectively isolates us from God. It is quite simply a lack of expectation that God wants to speak to us, a lack of expectation that God has a plan for us, a lack of expectation that God truly cares about all the joys and sorrows of our lives. If we want to hear from God, it is important that we desire and expect that to happen. Whenever we are afflicted with dryness and lack of expectation in our relationship with God, it is necessary to come up against this lack of expectancy. We must pray to expect to hear from God, and if we notice that we have no desire for this, we must pray for the desire to expect to hear from God. Lack of expectation is a terrible blight that can effectively shrivel up the roots of our experience of God’s revelation. We must never surrender the Christian conviction that God desires to reveal Himself and His plan of love every day to His children.

“We Have the Mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16)

As we pray and ponder Scripture, live a moral life, and participate in the Sacraments, God conforms us more and more to His Son Jesus Christ. The more that we receive light and wisdom from God, the more He fills our minds with the fullness of His revelation in Christ. As God’s revelation penetrates more deeply into our hearts and minds, what St. Paul asserts in 1 Corinthians 2:16 will come to pass: “we have the mind of Christ.” Paul said this not in an arrogant or self-righteous way, but to give full credit to God who changes us from glory to glory into the image of His Son. God wants to speak to us and to interact with us each day of our lives. He wants to guide us, teach us, console us, challenge us and change us. The goal of all this work is simply to conform us to Jesus Christ:

“For God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts, that we in turn might make known the glory of God shining on the face of Christ. This treasure we possess in earthen vessels, to make it clear that its surpassing power comes from God and not from us. We are afflicted in every way possible, but we are not crushed; full of doubts, we never despair. We are persecuted but never abandoned; we are struck down but never destroyed. Continually we carry about in our bodies the dying of Jesus, so that in our bodies the life of Jesus may be revealed.” (2 Corinthians 4:6–10)

No man on his own efforts could ever hope to become like the Son of God. This only happens through the work of God’s revelation in the depths of the human heart. God is true. He is the one who accomplishes this work. He is the one who promises to reveal the deep things of His inner life to us. Let us believe and receive the promise of revelation at the heart of the gospel: “what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor 2:9).

Father Gerard Beigel teaches at St. John Vianney Seminary in Denver, Colorado, and writes regularly for The California Mission.

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