How to Hear God’s Voice in Prayer – Healing 2024

Summary

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Setting aside time dedicated to prayer each day is important for our spiritual life. One of the best ways to grow more accustomed to hearing God’s voice in prayer by meditating on Scripture.

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Reflective Study Guide Questions

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“[A]fter the fire, a light, silent sound. When he heard this, Elijah hid his face in his cloak.”

1 Kgs. 12-13

1. Nell speaks about how we spend our time each day and the importance of dedicating a time for prayer. What part of your day might be the best time to set aside for prayer?

2. One way we can grow in our ability to hear God speaking to us is to become familiar with His voice by reading Scripture. How can you work on becoming more familiar with His voice? How can you work on reading and meditating on Scripture more often?

3. Nell shares that the Scripture passage of Jesus calming the sea often comes to mind for her when she is having difficulty. How can you work on recalling God’s Word during times of struggle in your life?

4. We do not need to make big plans in order to begin to have a deeper prayer life. We can take small steps to work on our prayer life, such as setting reminders for ourselves. What small steps can you take to grow in your prayer life?

Text: How to Hear God’s Voice in Prayer

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I’m Nelle O’ Leary. It’s a joy to be part of this retreat for you talking about healing in the Eucharist and through these series of talks my hope and my prayer for you is that you are more open and receptive to the transformation that God our father desires for you. Let’s begin with prayer, my friends, and then we’ll talk about the topic for today.

Opening Prayer

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Thank you Good and gracious God, for our breath and our bodies, for our life, for holding us in existence. We praise you. We bless you, we adore you, and we glorify you. We ask for your mercy to pour out upon us. We’re grateful for the gift of your son. Please help guide our minds and our hearts today to be open to what you desire for us to receive. We ask all this in the holy name of Jesus, Amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen. 

Kings 19:1-13

Okay, so our first, our first talk today is going to be about how to hear God’s voice in prayer and then how to incorporate prayer into your daily life. So how do I hear His voice in prayer? And then how do I grow to become a person of prayer? How do I enact this notion of prayer? I make this part of my daily routine. I want to start with one of my favorite scriptures. This is one Kings Nineteen, One to Thirteen. So I’m going to read it for you guys. “And He said, go forth and stand upon the Mount before the Lord. And behold, the Lord passed by and a great and strong wind rent the mountains and broke in pieces, the rocks before the Lord. But the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind and earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake, a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire, a still small voice. And when Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood the entrance of the cave. And behold, there came a voice to him and said, what are you doing here, Elijah?”

I love that reading so much. I love it because we’re looking for God often and all these huge external things in our lives when really He’s to be found in the silence of our hearts. And this is easy to say aloud, right? This is easy to say, oh, this lady said I’m pure in the silence of my hearts what actually mean Sounds like something, you’d read in a book, but how do you apply that, my friends, to your actual life? 

Well, I had an amazing encounter with our Lord over a week retreat. That’s right, not a day retreat, but a week retreat that I did in And I actually experienced this. I experienced this presence of God in the silence of my heart, but it wasn’t because I heard someone else say it or I read it in a book. Because I had other heard other people say it, and I had read it in books. It’s because I actually was able to and decided to, and was supported in setting aside time for prayer with our Lord, dedicated prayer time every day with an amazing spiritual director, which certainly helped, but dedicated prayer time. First it was just speaking to our Lord, was me speaking a lot to Him. But what really turned into a silent encounter of Him in that small still voice in my heart.

Now, I had every reason not to be able to set aside time for this. I have five children. I’ve been very busy working in ministry and writing and speaking, doing all these things, running a household teenager to toddler, like the whole span. And up until this point, I had always said, well, I don’t have time. I mean, of course it’d be wonderful to make a holy hour every day, but I simply don’t have time in these back, back to back pregnancies and nursing little babies and, and in pursuing the work the Lord had put on my heart. And the truth is, I still didn’t have time, time to do this prayer practice. But I’ve been forced a little bit by a number of circumstances, including one of our children, who is very sick, to make the time I actually had to make the time for our Lord because I had bottomed out. I kind of realized that myself reliant ways of this method of going through life, just doing it on my own, wasn’t going to cut it anymore. 

What Is A Prayer Life?

So it was with great trepidation that I got up super early in the morning, you guys super early in the morning and created the space in my body. Sometimes I’d fall asleep in prayer. It was like in the morning, but created this space in my body and in my mind and in my soul for prayer, for time set apart with our Lord. And I’d always been a person who had, you know, gone to mass regularly and prayed my rosary and certainly loved reading scripture and spiritual reading and spiritual books. But what this time set apart is for me was an actual dedication to doing the Ignatian spiritual exercises and sitting with sacred scripture, not sitting with it to do something with it. Not sitting with it to think about it and intellectualize it, but to just sit and receive in prayer, in the silence, in the sometimes sleepy silence and stillness where He wanted to be allowed to encounter me. So there, there are a few really interesting principles at play here. 

When we look at what is a prayer life, certainly the examples in the lives of the saints or even even the more modern day saints that we actually know a lot more about their prayer life can look like. Wow, Gosh, I mean, their prayer was hours and hours and hours on end. And that’s not realistic for most lay people in the modern era. We are not living the carthusian in life, even if we are interiorly hoping to like stay recollected, our day is jam packed with work and phone calls and meals to prep and stuff to clean up and relationships that God has given us to nurture. 

So what does this logistically actually look like to make space and time for a prayer life? So you know your schedule best and you know your season of life. And there are times when health and work and family life necessitate getting as much sleep as possible that you simply can’t cut out more sleep to make time to do like I did this super early, early morning rise for prayer time. But if we’re really honest with ourselves and we look at how we’re spending our time during the day, how much is scrolling? How much is watching or listening? How much is taking what we feel like is a justified me time, right? A time set apart where I’m just indulging whatever it is I need to kind of cope with my life, I need to veg out. How many times do we say that to person? Like, oh, I just need to check out like I stressful day, I need to check out. So when we’re checking out, what are we checking into? For me, for many years it was like my favorite shows shows that I’d watched time and time again. It could be the BBC Pride and Prejudice. It could be some spy show that I love, or some political thriller. It was something that was very familiar cadence that was like a sense of self soothing through watching, taking in it’s like kind of fluff, you know, like not super substantial, not like soul filling content. So when we’re checking out or need to veg out in the scope of your day, if you’re really honest looking and saying yeah, there are moments where I’m checking out, am I also checking in with the Lord? Am I taking that time? If I have time to scroll, I have time to pray. If I have time to passively, you know, soak in this podcast about true crime or mysteries or whatever, I probably also have time to still my heart in silence. Probably, maybe not. I mean, being honest with yourself. 

Setting Up Your Prayer Life

Again, this might not be a season where you can scrape out that to minute to an hour, the time that’s set aside, but maybe you can, how are we spending our time? What are we filling our time with? Because a very full life, I’m a person who loves to stack my schedule. It’s like extremely full life where there’s a lot of external opportunities for dopamine hits in my brain, right? For those, those hormones in our brain that make us feel really good. because I’m going and being and doing person who fills their life with that. Like I have there, there’s no energy left for plugging in with our Lord for this deep abiding stillness that you can access and you can tap into even when you’re in the midst of the buzz and the hum of your day. But you have to habituate it. So starting with actual time, that’s set aside for prayer and the prayer can look in many different ways, right? The prayer doesn’t have to look like I was just doing vocal prayer. I was reciting my prayers. I was saying aloud my prayers. I was saying aloud my complaints, right? I was saying aloud the things that I’m grateful for. I was saying them all like aloud, actually vocally. It doesn’t just have to be I’m reading the things I’m supposed to read. I’m doing my spiritual reading. These are all beautiful practices, right? These ways of prayer, right? 

The catechism says we have the vocal prayer, the meditative prayer, the contemplative prayer. So I’m doing meditations, I’m praying the rosary and I’m meditating in the mysteries of the rosary and I’m reading this book on sacred scripture or I’m doing these things. But to actually be open and available for our Lord to invite you into contemplation means having the discipline of silence in all of those areas and actual silencing of the mind and a dropping into the heart over and over and over again because it’s a habit, it takes time. But again, to frame this like what does your prayer look like? What can it look like? It’s not going to look like other people’s because your life doesn’t look like other people’s God’s inviting you to pray and become a person of prayer and grow in that, in your actual circumstances that you are in right now. Because guess what? He knows. He knows your current circumstances. He knows your life. He is helping design this plan for your life. That’s your sanctity. 

Listen To The Tone of His Voice

So looking at that objectively, and then also just thinking about hearing God’s voice. We hear this sometimes and, and in Catholic circles can be a little bit confusing because you’ll hear, hear someone say like, and then I heard the voice of the Lord. And you think, oh, they hear the voice of the Lord? Oh gosh, I’m not hearing the voice of the Lord. Now, perhaps what that person was talking about was like sensing a movement in their heart or like hearing something in their heart. It’s not usually an auditory God. Now behave yourself put that chocolate down. It’s not necessarily like a bullhorn from heaven. Hearing the voice of the Lord. There is one way, a guaranteed way you can hear the voice of the Lord. I’m going to let you in on this secret. It’s super guaranteed. Super, super guaranteed. And not even that secret. Guys it’s sacred scripture.

We have the divinely inspired word of God. Have you noticed in the New Testament portion of your Bible, everything Jesus says is often in red, depends on the version of the Bible. But Jesus speaks a lot in the four gospels. He has a lot to say. And He wasn’t just speaking to His apostles and His disciples at that time. He’s speaking to you and to me. So if you’re wondering, does the word have a word for me? Is this a catalog of activities that happened during the redeemer’s lifetime? Okay, check, check, check. Historically happening, no, it is, but it’s also a word for you, A word for me. 

So the encouragement. If you want to hear the voice of God in your life, become familiar with the tone of His voice. Read His words, read them aloud, read them silently, meditate over them. Use that beautiful traditional prayer of the church, Lectio Divina, where you go very slowly. You just take in little bits at a time and you let them resonate your body and you ask the Holy Spirit to enlighten your mind as to what He’s trying to tell you in that moment. And you read it again. You kind of ruminate Lectio Divina, divine reading. You ruminate over scripture slowly, bit by bit and become familiar with the voice of our beloved. You’ll find when you do that, when you soak in the scriptures a lot, that stuff will come to mind. So if you’re  encountering a circumstance that’s super frustrating or super upsetting, the Lord’s words will come to mind. Be not afraid. Think of, think of what He’s like I love this story when He’s calming in the sea and He’s with the apostles and He’s asleep in the boat. There’s this huge storm. They’re like, Lord, master, master, we’re going to perish. And He’s like, He hushes the wind, He hushes the, the storm on the water and He chides them a little bit like I was with you. Why are you afraid I was with you? 

So those words of Christ come to mind with me when I’m perturbed about something exasperating kind of feeling flustered and feeling like, where are you Lord? Where are you Lord? Like, oh, I’m in the boat. I’m in the boat. He’s here too. I don’t have to be afraid. He’s with me. So hearing our Lord’s words in prayer look like learning the words that He’s uttered in sacred scripture, that’s the big secret. I mean, it’s not a secret, but that’s kind of the key for when you’re hearing people talking about voice of the Lord, the voice of the Lord. 

We have His words, He is the word made flesh food wells among us. But we have His words right there in sacred scripture. I think too there’s can be a fine line between allowing the Holy Spirit to work on our spiritual imagination in prayer and images coming to us or sensing our Lord, taking us somewhere and imaginary things happening in spiritual life and in the spiritual imagination versus a spiritual imaginary. So the imaginary can look like things that we might need to talk through with a friend or with a good counselor or a good therapist. Things that we are projecting ourselves into or perseverating over. Remember Satan drives, it’s our Lord who draws. So if in our spiritual time we feel very flustered and very upset and very disturbed, and we are imagining our Lord saying all these things to us that are shaming or accusing or chiding or scolding like really badly, that in and of itself is a sign that like, oh, this probably isn’t from the Lord. 

So talking those things through and realizing I don’t want to just put myself in a spiritual place and then let my imagination go hog wild and having imaginary conversations with our Lord or imaginary things transpiring. Instead, there’s a deep and abiding invitation to allow the Holy Spirit to enter in and use our imaginations. 

Try To Incorporate Prayer Into Your Daily Life

Thinking of Saint Ignatius, of Loyola and his directives on that, to see where He’s moving our hearts and our minds. And then talking that over with a good friend, someone who’s a trusted spiritual advisor to you or a spiritual director, can be really helpful to make that distinction between the imaginary and the imagination. And to try to actually incorporate prayer into our daily life, I think always requires looking at the impediments to that, looking at what’s stopping me, what’s slowing me down from incorporating prayer into my life such that I become a person of prayer. Not even a person who prays, but I want to be Lord, like a person of prayer. 

Okay, the first thing is, we’ve talked about this time, I don’t have time. I don’t have time. We all, we all have a little bit of time. The second thing is I don’t really want to, I feel really dry in prayer. I’m never filled up in a joyful way. After I spend time in prayer, I don’t have a desire for it. And that can be a stadia or like a spiritual, a dryness. There are lots of reasons to go into like not really wanting it, including feeling disappointed. Greatly took all these things to our Lord and prayer, nothing happened and nothing changed. Is He actually even listening? So time not really wanting to, not really feeling like it, or the last impediment is oftentimes, I don’t know what to say, I don’t know what to say in prayer. 

Lord, like I’ve given you my list of requests, I’ve told you the things I’m really unhappy about, that I would like changed, kind of ties them with the requests I’ve tried to do. You know, I’ve tried to be grateful for what I’ve been given, but I’m doing a lot of movement. I’m not feeling a lot back from you. So I don’t really know how to do this prayer thing unless I’m reciting, you know, reciting the beautiful prayers and rote traditional prayers we have in our faith tradition. I don’t know how to pray from my heart. So for the time we’ve talked about examining your actual schedule, how are you spending your time? Doing inventory? How are you actually spending your time? And the lack of desire is, it’s so, it’s so normal to feel and experience and believe you are in a place of a spiritual desert, like utter spiritual dryness. And that’s where we request and beg for the Lord to replenish our minds and our hearts and increase our faith, increase our faith, and increase our trust. because we can’t get ourselves out of this desert. We can’t do a great workbook and read the right thing and listen to the right talk and get out of my spiritual muteness. Only the Lord can do that. 

So we, we offer to cooperate with Him. Lord, I’m asking you to increase my faith, to increase my trust in you, to show me Lord, all of the places where trust has been ruptured in other relationships that I’m carrying over into my relationship with you Lord. And then we wait upon the Lord. We wait upon His perfect timing and, and the pain that we experience in spiritual drive is like a little cross we can offer up to Him, which is actually always a hidden gift. And then not knowing what to say, teach us how to pray. Lord, our prayer there is instead of like, oh, okay, I got to memorize more prayers. I got to buy more books. I got to find more things to do. It’s not doing more, it’s actually doing less. 

Setting Little Steps To Start Your Prayer Life

It’s saying in a helpless posture of a child, Lord, teach me how to pray. Teach me how to be intimately open to the workings of your spirit, I don’t know how Lord. And just to really be a child before our Lord, to be a child before God, the Father, to be a child in the arms of our beloved, teach me how to pray. Lord, asking for Him to do it for us is the most effective prayer. To say, I cannot do this. Please do it for me is actually a turning over of that self-reliance. And it’s a huge gift to God. So really like small steps in humility are better than these grandiose plans I’m going to do million rosaries. I’m going to go to mass every single day and I’m going to read all the spiritual books on my shelf. Like, yeah, those grandiose plans are really hard to act upon. They fall flat very quickly. 

So to start with little humble steps of, I’m putting an alarm on my phone and every time the alarm goes off could be on the hour, I’m just reminded to turn my heart and mind to God. Maybe I say a Hail Mary, maybe I’m putting on the timers for the Angelus, right? Six, noon and six. But it doesn’t even have to be something that complicated. I’m going to finish that podcast of Bible in the year this year. Like I’m going to do all the things. When we get that overwhelming feeling, we tend to do very little. 

So instead to be gentle with yourself, if you’re kind of climbing out or just exhausted at the bottom of your prayer pit and saying, Lord, I can’t do this alone. And in little ways I’m going to set up these external reminders to turn my heart and mind over to you repeatedly throughout the day, reading little snippets of scripture just on your phone. If you think I don’t know what my Bible is, I can’t pull it out, that’s another impediment to it. I’m just not going to get to it, I can’t find it. If you’re on your phone, you can open up your web browser and you can go to the USCCB’s website and you can read all the gospels right there. Just make it more doable, more bite sized to be gentle and easy upon yourself. 

The very last thing is to really be aware and attuned to your influences in this area. That the healing that Jesus wants to bring to you, the joy and delight he wants to bring to you of an intimate invitation to be with Him, can be really blurred by what other people are doing. By what other people are saying, by how other people are posting about it, they always have these snappy reels. Clearly their prayer life is amazing. Oh, should I follow that advice? Should I follow that advice? It’s like too many rabbit holes. 

So the people who should be influencing you are people you actually know and who know you, a trusted friend, a religious in your life, a priest, a wonderful woman or a man who’s you know, trained in spiritual direction. People who are actually in relationship with you will be far better guides than somebody on the internet. My friends, I’m praying with and for you that these tiny little digestible changes in your prayer life and hearing His voice through actually reading sacred scripture and in allowing Him to transform you by deepening your trust in your faith and teaching you how to pray will show you how much Jesus loves you, how much our father loves you, how much the Holy Spirit longs to animate you in your life each and every day. God bless You. 

About Nell O’Leary

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