Listening Prayer: Learning to Hear God's Voice and Keep a Prayer Journal

By Leanne Payne

Shows readers how they can experience a fuller, more meaningful prayer life by learning how to listen to God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
• Release date: Mar 1, 1999
• ISBN: 9781585580781

Book preview

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Preface

I awakened early this Christmas morn, got my first cup of coffee, and came with great anticipation to prayer. Talking to God and listening to Him is the making of every day, but it is especially momentous on the great feast days such as Christmas, and at times of new beginnings such as New Year’s Day, birthdays, and so on. Keeping a journal that gives shape and direction to this immensely important activity seems, if possible, even more rewarding at these holiday times.

A little before 5:00 A.M. I awakened ready to pray and praise God to the strains of some of the most glorious music ever written, the Christmas hymns that reflect the church in utter awe of the incarnation. This morning, however, I found myself dull and sluggish. The coffee did not help either.

This could have bothered me. I could have settled for a sluggish time, leaving my Christmas day a good deal less than it was meant to be. I could have been tempted to misread the situation, overspiritualize it, and feel guilty. Or I could have been tempted to ascribe it simply to getting older! Thankfully, I did none of this. Reflecting on the blessing of living in an airtight home built for a cold, wintry climate—capable of keeping out not only the polar winds but also blocking the fresh air—I bundled up in my warmest wraps and went skipping out, praising and thanking the Lord with my spirit and…with my mind (1 Corinthians 14:15) to the banks of Lake Michigan and back.

Outside in the early, dark Christmas morning, I had the frosty, tree-lined streets all to myself. The houses, their large windows boasting Christmas trees that blinked and twinkled, were nevertheless still snugly asleep. Not a single child had yet sounded an excited alarm. The avenue was a private and lovely out-of-doors prayer closet.

I returned full of energy. The first part of my prayers, giving praise and thanksgiving to God, were special indeed. Returning home and taking my prayer journal in hand, I was now eager to continue my early morning readings and meditations on the incredible mystery of Christ’s incarnation—His descent into our flesh and world, His very own creation.

Then, in the middle of journaling my listenings to God there came the inspiration, full-blown and mightily insistent, to write this little tome. It is not usual to start such a project on Christmas, but because the book chose this day to start birthing itself it was the only thing to do.

It is therefore with an unusual joy, amplified to almost a wild abandon at times as I hear brass and organ playing all the glorias of Christmas and with my hope that this book will be a special gift to you, that I begin. This book is intended to be practical and easy to use. My hope is that it will quickly usher you into a fuller prayer life.

Introduction

And thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy God led thee these forty years…(Deuteronomy 8:2, KJV).

Because keeping a prayer journal is so helpful and meaningful to me, I often refer to it when speaking or writing. And in response, people ask me to share just how it is I keep one and all that goes into it.

In the past, I have been slow to respond to these requests, partly because my own journal, with its shape and content, simply evolved. I expected the same to happen to others who took pen and paper in hand while in a posture of prayer with the Scriptures before them. But this does not always happen—except perhaps with the writerly types. On my discovery that some of my own prayer-team members have struggled to put one together to no avail, I concluded that there is something of value I am to share.

There are other reasons I have lagged, however. Keeping a prayer journal is one of the most personal things we can ever do. Within it are love letters between the soul and her God. As the soul seeks to hear and obey—fallen and needy as it is—it shares the most intimate and profound things with God. Shameful ones too. It names and confesses its sins, repenting of them. It begs for grace and mercy to face all of life—its joys (Lord, help me to stand steady under joy!), its dry periods (Lord, send Your gentle rains, soften the ground of my heart, cause the seed of your word planted there to sprout and grow), its sorrows (Lord, somehow turn this anguish into healing power for others). It asks the questions it may never have the courage to bring up in this finite world, which is filled with ambiguity and fear. Because a prayer journal is such a private matter, perhaps I have unconsciously guarded mine by not analyzing it too closely or talking about it in any detail. Then too, knowing that one’s prayer journal reflects one’s own particular and unique needs, I have hesitated to lay out mine as a model.

The largest reason for hesitancy, however, is that it seems risky to write on listening prayer itself. It is no small thing to teach modern people to come present to God and their own hearts in this way; it has large consequences. One priest summed up the riskiness by saying, It is much easier to preside over a graveyard than a kindergarten! And, alas, all too often we have opted for the graveyard of legalism—or just plain twentieth-century materialism—rather than the kindergarten of freedom through walking in the Spirit. This freedom is what maturity in Christ and listening prayer are all about.

Most of us can appreciate that prayer is truly a dialogue with God. We see it modeled in the Scriptures from Genesis through Revelation, and in the lives of the saints down through the ages. But the concept of listening and seeing with the ears and eyes of our hearts is alien to modern Christians. Indeed, our very hearts are foreign to us as we suffer ignorance of their true motions and the way our souls should interact with God.[1]

As I look back into all my teaching and writing, however, I see I have already taken the risk. Listening prayer is a theme that runs through all my work. It is key in bringing the wounded out of psychological and spiritual darkness. All who need restoration of the soul listen to the wrong voices and are under the law of those voices. In order to be healed they must identify, refute, and renounce them. Then, as importantly, with their faces lifted straight up to God, they must receive the healing word God is always speaking in the place of the misleading or lying words.

Once over this hurdle, I thought about keeping this book quite impersonal by writing out a few principles and a how-to on setting up a journal that incorporated these principles. But, alas, that seemed so abstract and cold. Besides, I seem incapable of writing in those reasonable kinds of ways. Meaning, the principles fleshed out into the being and doing of life, starts pouring out and overcomes the neat, rational little how-to’s. I find I am sharing from my own journals—which threatens any vestigial fear of exposure yet left in my life.

The only way for me to go about this, then, is to share simply and personally on how I keep a prayer journal and how I learned to listen to God. Prayer is the most important thing I do: praise, give thanks, intercede, make personal petitions, confess my sins, forgive others, set goals with God, and listen to His response. It is the most creative work I do, out of which any and all other making flows.

PART 1

Keeping a Listening Prayer Journal

1

The Simple How-to’s

Take words with you and return to the LORD (Hosea 14:2).

Bring whatever you see during the day into relationship with God and immerse it in eternity. Then you will find it again in eternity as a blessing.[1] (Mother Basilea Schlink)

Although some of the most profound experiences and insights of life come out of keeping track of what we say to God and what we hear Him say, the procedure itself is simple. And it can be an easy organizational tool that brings shape and order to everything else we do. The divine order and blueprint lies like a mantle over the lives of those who learn to pray effectively. Because my gifts do not lie in the direction of organization, this ordering is a lifesaver for me in terms of keeping priorities straight and doing the necessary things.

To set up your listening prayer journal, start by filling a loose-leaf binder with good-grade paper and five or six dividers. Have a supply of good pens nearby—I like black, extra-fine point, using red pens to underline. Then order your dividers as follows: Word, Praise and Thanksgiving, Intercession, Petition, Forgiveness.

The bulk of loose-leaf paper is placed after the Word divider, for here we write down those salient points of our daily conversation with God. Prayer starts with and remains deeply rooted in the Scriptures; the revealed Word of God quickly discerns our hearts. If our hearts are anxious, fearful, unforgiving, or sinful then they are to be immediately set right in conversation with God. If they are thankful and rejoicing in the work of the day, we will be praising and blessing the Lord, spending more time in intercession for others and personal petition. Whether in joy or in crying out of deep need and utter wretchedness; whether in times of great clarity, the light shining all around; whether in times of confusion, the darkness so oppressive we can barely squeak out our questions before God: all is brought into conversation with Him. The Word section, therefore, is for our daily dialogue with God. This listening to Him exercises our spiritual ears to receive the word He sends throughout the day.

The other dividers grant us easy access to prayer lists and the Scriptures and insights that not only pertain to them, but boost our faith and spur us on to prayer. These lists evolve naturally out of our journaling as we receive insight on not only for whom and what to pray but how to pray. The Lord yearns to grant us the Spirit of wisdom and revelation (Ephesians 1:17) as we continue in prayer. We need only to ask for it. In this way He builds on the previous insights He has given us. These lists often turn into veritable treasure troves. Apart from journaling these insights and listing them for easy access, however, they can become buried treasure—neglected or forgotten altogether.

With dividers and paper in your binder, your pens and pencils at hand, gather up your favorite reference Bible and begin. I am currently enjoying the New International Version Study Bible with its easy-to-use reference helps, but always have several other translations and commentaries within arm’s reach.

In order to neglect no part of the Scriptures, a sound plan for daily Scripture reading is needed. I am reminded of the plight of a congregation whose pastor was especially fond of the Scriptures on angels. He therefore fed his people a steady diet of sermons about them. He was obviously presenting an unbalanced and restricted gospel message to his flock! But this story speaks of something we are all prone to if not careful—that of valuing some part of the Scripture to the exclusion of other parts. Be careful to follow a plan that fully utilizes the Old Testament as well as the New.

The plan I have used the most is from The Book of Common Prayer. It follows the church year: Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent and the Passion of our Lord, the Feasts of the Resurrection, of Ascension, of Pentecost, and then Trinity—the full celebration of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I prefer the Scripture listings from older versions of this great classic. It is also good to switch plans from time to time. At present, I am enjoying a thematic plan of Scripture reading, Daily Light from the Bible.[2] It employs the King James translation; I read the Scriptures in the NIV as well. This double reading of the same texts has proven to be a blessing, for I grew up with the King James and its archaic language. The comparison of words and passages yields wondrous insight and meaning.

Besides the Scripture readings, I keep several of the great devotional writers’ books close at hand. Their meditations on the Scriptures are short and mostly topical, and rarely fail to stimulate. An ancient classic by Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, and later ones by F. B. Meyer, Our Daily Walk, and Oswald Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, are longtime favorites. There are other devotional classics, however, that I simply cannot imagine being without.

Daily Prayer Outline

As a guide for daily prayer, you may want to type the following out on strong, durable paper and place at the front of your journal:

Daily Prayer Outline

This format for daily prayer can fit into a half-hour prayer time or a full day of prayer. Although we do not need to pray all these parts of prayer every day, or necessarily in the order given here, they hold within them the principles of a well-rounded prayer-life. This is a way of always praying the prayer Christ taught us.

Guarding Your Prayer Journal

A prayer journal is not something for anyone else’s eyes, and so the matter of guarding the privacy of one’s journal must be considered before beginning it. Any open prayer journal is unlikely to be a real one. Even the fear that someone will invade the privacy of its pages can keep a soul from the searching kind of honesty that should go into it.

This does not mean that we will not share large parts of our journals. Much of the content of my books first formed in my journals. But the journals are private, and those people closest to me know that my prayer journals are not to survive me. Besides the fact that these are for God’s and my eyes only, if I worried about others interpreting my scribblings, or misinterpreting the multitude of hastily written insertions that only I could ever either decipher or interpret, the journals would themselves become self-conscious. They would lose their keenest edge and value.

This is not to say, of course, that we do not listen to God together with others. There is nothing more valuable to a married couple, ministry teams, or prayer partners than coming together in listening prayer. In fact, if we are not listening to God together with God’s people, we endanger our private listening. When we come together as God’s people, He inhabits our praises and prayers in a greater way. Our brothers and sisters are gifted by the Spirit in ways we are not. Their speaking and listening to God sharpens ours, adding dimensions of wisdom and knowledge we would not gain otherwise.

And besides, there is the matter of our blind spots. We all have them. I thank God for prayer partners who speak light and vision into my blind spots. In this way, our listening is enhanced and judged, our idiosyncrasies revealed. Our prayer journals therefore prepare us for the kind of honesty and openness that is required for listening to God with our spouses and prayer ministry partners. Open communication with God enables us to be open, in discerning wisdom and without fear, to our brothers and sisters in Christ. Individual and corporate listening prayer are complementary one to the other. Neither are to be neglected.

The keeping of a prayer journal is so important that I begin it anew each year with a J.J. penciled in at the top of the title page and an S.D.G at the bottom. These are Latin initials that stand for the prayer, Jesus help me, and "Soli Deo Gloria, which means to the glory of God alone." I learned this from Johann Sebastian Bach, who started and ended his musical compositions in this way. This is how a man of great genius committed his day’s work to God. The fact that he wrote, as some say, the equivalent of a masterpiece per day is undoubtedly due in great part to this committal.

A Scripture passage that reveals why such a practice is so rewarding, even when we are far from being geniuses, is one that I make a part of daily prayer:

Commit thy works unto the LORD, and thy thoughts shall be established (Proverbs 16:3, KJV).

You may want to pause now to commit your work of journaling to the Lord in some such way. We next move on to consider meditation on the Scriptures as part of listening prayer.

2

The Word

Seek ye out of the book of the LORD, and read (Isaiah 34:16, KJV).

When your words came, I ate them; and they were my joy and my heart’s delight (Jeremiah 15:16).

The sacred writings…have power to make you wise and lead you to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus (2 Timothy 3:15, NEB).

We can never finish plumbing the depths of the treasures God has given us in the sacred writings. These, the lectio divina (sacred texts), are inspired by God. They are variously called the Word, the Word of God, the Word of Christ, and the Word of Truth, as well as the Book of the Lord, the Book of the Law, the Sword of the Spirit, and the Oracles of God.

Because God chose to give us birth through the word of truth (James 1:18), it is extremely dangerous for anyone with a low view of Scripture—or any part of it—to keep a listening prayer journal. For example, the New Testament cannot be fully understood apart from the Old, especially when one has a low view of the Old Testament. The Christian faith does not stand apart from her Judaic root, but is the full flower of it.

God speaks to us in what can only be described as supernatural ways when the imperishable seed, the Word of God, is continually hidden away in our hearts. The Holy Spirit takes the truth of the gospel of Christ from both Testaments, anoints it and seals it on our minds and hearts. To the extent our hearts are bereft of the Holy Writ, our capacity to listen and discern aright is limited. Using terms from Peter’s first epistle, the perishable is more apt to be mixed in with the imperishable.

For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. For [and here Peter quotes from Isaiah 40:6–8],

"All men are like grass,

   and all their glory is like the flowers of the field;

the grass withers and the flowers fall,

   but the word of the Lord stands forever."

And this is the word that was preached to you (1 Peter 1:22–25).

Prayer to God encompasses three vital steps. The first principle and first step in beginning to listen to God is to take the sacred texts into our very spirits and souls by meditating on them prayerfully. His word then abides in us, burning as an inner light, and we just naturally cry out to God. This spontaneous word spoken back to God is the second step in prayer. Our forebears in the faith termed it oratio, which is responsive speech born of God’s word aflame within us. As God speaks through His word we respond—through our own needs and through the Spirit’s prodding. These responses include questions where fuller understanding is needed as well as thanksgiving, praise, and petitions for wisdom, understanding, guidance, and so on.

We then move into the third step of prayer—listening to God. Because this is so neglected today it is the main subject of the second part of this book. This listening exercises our spiritual ears, preparing us to receive from God any word He might send even in the more hectic parts of our days and lives.

We must fully appreciate the importance and centrality of the Scriptures before delving into this subject. The Bible—the revealed Word of God—is a vital part of prayer. Those with a low view of the Bible should not attempt listening prayer, for it can lead into dangerous gnostic listening. (Chapter 14 is devoted to this subject.) Some with a high view of the Scriptures, in contrast, are prone to cordon the Bible off as though it was not a vital part of prayer. These people first study the Scriptures and then pray. But because God’s basic way of revealing Himself to us is through His Son and the Holy Scriptures that bear witness to Him, we can delight in listening to God even as we read them.[1]

Therefore, I open my prayer journal to the Word section as I reach for the Scriptures each morning. By this, I am ready for the second step in prayer, oratio, my response to the word God is speaking to my heart. I record my strong responses that are born both of my own need and of the Spirit’s prodding. These responses concern guidance, exhortation, and the further understanding that is needed. I will return to them in the vital third step of prayer, listening to God.

Always in prayer we seek to gain the Lord’s mind on the matter at hand, and for an increase of wisdom and understanding from the Spirit. Sometimes this prayer is answered right away; other times we need to wait patiently on the Lord. Turning St. Paul’s prayer from Ephesians 1:17–18 into ours we can pray:

Glorious Father, grant to me [us] the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in increasing measure, larger and larger, that I [we] may know You better. Thank You for greater knowledge of who You are and what Your will is.

Open the eyes of my heart and fill them with Your light, that I might know the hope to which You have called me—my glorious inheritance; that I may know Your incomparably great power—that which You exerted in Christ when He was raised from the dead.

We do not always know why a portion of Scripture grips us so. On first coming to Christ as an adult and seeking Him with all my might, God spoke strongly to me through two verses of Isaiah 45. In the Scriptures these words were spoken of and to the man anointed to conquer and then rebuild Jerusalem, although he did not yet serve the living God. Even so, I could not escape them; they were spoken to me as well.

I will go before you

   and will level the mountains,

I will break down gates of bronze

   and cut through bars of iron.

I will give you the treasures of darkness,

   riches stored in secret places,

so that you may know that I am the LORD,

   the God of Israel, who summons you by name (Isaiah 45:2–3).

Thirty years ago this verse was transferred to the Petition section of my journal where it remains. I still ponder deeply what the treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places means for me personally. I think it relates to my understanding of the healing of the soul. By the

Reviews for Listening Prayer

[gwg_3 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is really like 3 books in one. In the first section, I was a bit overwhelmed by Ms. Payne's complex system of journaling. However, the second part that covers how God speaks to us is excellent. The last part of the book is the best part in my opinion. In that section, Ms. Payne warns against the dangers of "neo-gnostic listening". As I wrote to Ms. Payne and expressed, I believe this last part should be published on its own. The message that it brings is so desperately needed - especially in the charismatic part of the church. Absolutely fantastic insight. True spiritual wisdom from this woman of God whom Dallas Willard calls a "daily associate of Jesus".