How to make sure you're hearing GOD'S voice in prayer?

[Music] hey it's Chris from the christophanic show where we dive into how to live a more joyful life every day in your everyday life the kind of the life that God dreams of for you check it out how do I make sure that when I'm in that mode of receiving that that the place of my mind or imagination or thoughts or feelings are going or being led by the Lord aren't just from me or should I just have a general trust that if I'm in a state of grace that that is being led by the Lord I think what's key in this is formation in the spiritual life which is really what we're talking about here and that is learning how to pray you know I'm this was before I entered the Seminary I came across a number you know I was reading books about the spiritual life and all these authors said meditation is really important in the spiritual life it's really important and I was there saying well can't somebody tell me what this is you know you're always telling me it's important but I don't know how to do this and I didn't know of any one of whom I could ask until I read francis's sales introduction to The Devout life and he was the first one that actually explained it so we need formation from our tradition and today there are endless resources of this kind if I may I've written a couple of books too please please I insist yeah one is called meditation and contemplation and ignatian guide to praying with scripture and that's like a short simple exposition of these ways that we're talking about and then the other is called an ignatian introduction to prayer scriptural Reflections according to the spiritual exercises in which I just take people through 40 biblical passages the idea being that if you pray through those it might take 10 minutes you know for each of them by the time that's finished you'll have a sense of how to pray with scripture yeah so give me give me some tips here it's morning before the kids are up I went to bed on time so that I can get up early enough right we over spiritualize some of our our failures and problems we're like Lord I can't think straight the Lord's looking down from heaven saying so stop being on Instagram till two in the morning and then asking me why you can't think straight the next day right uh I got my morning coffee it's quiet the dogs are still asleep all right I open the Bible how do I make the leap from just reading this to conversing with God and saying okay speak I'm listening Speak to My Heart what's what is lectio Divina what is what is it how do I do this so you would need a way of choosing the scripture for the morning one thing that many people do is to take the gospel from the daily mass you may not be able to get to mass but the readings are very accessible online or in Publications maybe the first reading the psalm or the gospel as you feel drawn it's easy to find that by the way one of the cool things about being Catholic same gospel read throughout the world every day same gospel today as in Pakistan is in the Vatican and you can just Google and find it there's apps for it too yeah yeah so let's um let's just say today's Gospel is Luke 5 1-11 the catch Peter and the catcher fish and uh all right there I am I've got my Bible I have my 15 minutes or whatever it is in my quiet time yeah how do I start yeah you know if you ever watch let's say you meet at Starbucks with a friend for coffee and you uh you meet each other you shake hands or whatever is appropriate to the relationship and then maybe your subtle coats and things and you're getting settled and the conversation is a little bit superficial at that point did you get my message and so on now you don't get together for the sake of that first those first few minutes but without those first few minutes you probably won't get to the Deep place you know which is to say human hearts need transitional time to enter into the deep place and this is Ignatius Council on how to do that so he says for the space of in our father how long does it take to say in our father half a minute I don't know lift up your heart on high toward God and look into the eyes of God and see his gaze upon you oh the Gaze of his love upon you yes now another way of saying that is because no one has seen God as as you know John writes but the word became flesh and so forth you know another way of saying that is what did people came to Jesus with Good Will sinful lives may be physically broken lives but with Good Will came to Jesus what did they see in his eyes when their gaze met his obviously it was something that Adam at times even just to abandon everything else to go out to the desert they just wanted to be there they saw a love a sensitivity an understanding look at the Samaritan woman what does she see in his eyes or Peter after he's denied him three times and the glance of Christ that allows him the tears to begin to flow and the healing begin see that you know I'll just say personally for many years the way I've done it is with that verse in Mark 10 when this man stands before Jesus Jesus looking upon him and for many sometimes that takes a lot of my prayer I mean so that's what Ignatius says start that way and then what happens is that prayer is immediately situated in its truth prayer fundamentally what is it it's a relationship two persons the Divine and the human in Commerce you know in in conversation in communion so start that way start with this the lord loves you so much think about that for a second I mean that line you just just said that's the kind of line that I might read in the Bible and just skip past to the next line stop he looks at you and loves you okay what does that look like let your imagination engage that for a second the foundation of the spiritual life isn't all about your love for God as if you're just climbing your way to heaven it's his love for you what's that look like in his eyes what a great place to start yeah and that's only one of Ignatius councils again we're just touching you know the tip of the iceberg here but I can't think of a better way to start your prayer and then once you've done that now you can go to the scripture and it's no longer you with a written page it's you with a Divine person who is speaking to you through the written page right now yeah right now right this is right he's looking at you right now man I love that yeah Ignatius word for this is that we dispose ourselves to receive the grace of prayer that's why we set aside time choose the gospel in the right place we learn from the tradition about things that can help us enter more deeply into prayer what we're doing is we are disposing ourselves to receive something that is primarily God's work you know God is the protagonist as John Paul II said in prayer and our part is as Ignatius it's a beautiful word so if we don't set aside time if we don't open up the scripture if we don't you know give our heart to the prayer as best we can during that time it'll be harder for God to pour that Grace into our hearts so that's our part to dispose ourselves wasn't that great listen I never want you to miss out on these amazing conversations and these amazing teachings by yours truly so here's what you do take the Subscribe button and just grab it with authority and rub it in the face of your Bible or however you want to do this as long as you hit subscribe and you'll never miss this content be sure to share it with everybody you know God bless you we'll see in the next video

Channel: Augustine Institute | The Catholic Faith Explained

Views: 31,657

Keywords: eucharist, Catholic eucharist, transubstantiation, catholic sacrament, 7 sacraments, augustine institute, formed catholic, ignatius press, lighthouse catholic media, lighthouse talks, Dr. Tim Gray, Dr. Brant Pitre, Chris Stefanick, holy communion, catholic church, Catholic Faith, the augustine institute, catholic theology, catholic graduate school, christian theology

Id: s34hNavuLmE

Length: 7min 36sec (456 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 07 2023