John H Armstrong

Listening to God's Word with the Heart

Yesterday I made a point about the Hebrew word (dabhar) that is used for God's Word. This word means much more than the sound of words in our ear or the registry of a meaning upon our mind. The same Hebrew word is used for God's creating the world by his word. And this is the same word that expresses God's revelation in Jesus Christ. When the word became incarnate it was this creative, powerful, faith producing word, which became the Logos of God (cf. John 1:1).

We listen to words at many different levels and in many different contexts. Words come at us in many forms and at many levels. Some words go no further than our ears. We hear sounds and that is it. Others enter our minds and make us think. (I am convinced that this is how most people read the Bible!) Some words touch us on the surface of our emotions and bring shallow feelings of joy or sadness.

The deepest form of listening, that which the biblical writers speak about regularly, is to listen with the ears of your heart. Such words will impact us powerfully. They can and do change us. This is real listening. We usually listen to dear friends in this way, a way that is rooted in the love of a relationship. The words of such friends might hurt us but they ultimately enhance our sense of self-worth and change how we see ourselves and the world around us. More times than not they encourage us to keep moving in faith and love. 

This is how God wants us to hear his words in Holy Scripture, with holy listening that touches our deepest inner being, the heart. Jesus told Mary and Martha that Mary had chosen the better way because, rather than serving his meal and speaking to him, Mary sat with him and listened with her whole being. We also recall that on the Road to Emmaus the two disciples hearts burned within them while they were listening to Jesus open up the Scripture and reveal himself to them. This is what needs to happen to you and me? We need to experience the Spirit opening our hearts to the Scriptures so that we might see and hear Jesus speaking to our hearts. 

When we listen to the word in this way we experience deep feelings of love, joy, freedom and need. We experience hope and confidence, awe and wonder. We may even experience regret about sin or shame. But even this regret, or sorrow, is godly and is clearly meant to lead us into the love of Jesus. Whatever you feel when you properly read/hear the Word of God you know that you are rightly listening to the Word of the Lord. Do not settle for less. Refuse to study the Bible as an academic text or a devotional manual. Open your heart and your soul to God and ask him to speak to you.

Caution: If you read God's word and you have continual feelings of guilt, fear and loathing, or excessive anxiety, then you need some help. Find a spiritual adviser or solid Christian counselor. Speak to a trusted friend. But do not accept constant anxiety as the norm for what happens when you listen to God's Word from the heart!

The Promise of Rivers

In John 7 our Lord visits Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles. John 7:1-10:21 covers a period of only eight days. But what an amazing eight days it was in terms of our Lord's mission and what he revealed. People had all kinds of responses to Jesus during these days of his flesh. Some thought him mentally deranged (7:20) while others thought he was the promised Messiah (7:31, 40). Verse 1 says the religious leaders sought to kill him. We should not read this as if all the Jews, in some general way, wanted him dead. Jesus taught in the temple and attracted a great deal of public attention. The response was truly varied as the text indicates.

The Feast of Tabernacles was an eight-day harvest festival commemorating the time when Israel walked in the wilderness of Sinai and lived in tents. Along with Passover and Pentecost this was one of the big three in Israel's liturgical remembrance. In later times water would be mixed with wine and poured at the base of the altar, both as purification and as a remembrance of the water flowing from the rock that Moses had struck. In the midst of this celebration John records the following:

³⁷ On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. ³⁸ Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them." An alternative way of reading 7:38 (in the NIV 2011) is: "Or me. And let anyone drink who believes in me.” As Scripture has said, “Out of him (or them) will flow rivers of living water.”

I've thought about these words for at least fifty years, maybe more. I believe the correct way to understand this promise is to grasp the practice and importance of contemplation. Simply put, only those who thirst will be given this living water which will flow out of their innermost being. In the same way those who hunger will receive the imperishable food that satisfies. But this desire must be right desire. Right desire is human desire that is stripped of self, or better put, stripped of all self-seeking. Heartfelt desire for God can overcome our weakness, even our negligence. This seems to be what Jesus means by his words to the woman in Luke 7:47 who gave an extravagant gift to him. Without deep desire little progress can be made in the realm of the spirit. Without thirst we will not desire the water of life, the inner working of the Spirit. And without desire we will never contemplate the mystery of the Trinity who lives in us.

We stifle this desire in many ways. For most of us it is busyness. Constant talking and endless activity hinders us and we become satisfied with a sip of water here and there. For me my activity became a form of escapism over the years. I feared silence and solitude precisely because I feared seeing my inner poverty for what it really was. But God gently and lovingly drove me to seek him more and more. Psalm 42:1 is a growing experience: "As the deer pants after the living water, so my soul pants for you, O God."

In ancient Palestine "water" was understood as living if it was "alive" with freshness and purity. In the ancient Scriptures living water was the symbol of the Holy Spirit. The apostle says that the Spirit has been "poured forth into our hearts" (Galatians 4:6). The saints and mystics have always understood this living water as the gift of the Spirit in creating contemplative stillness and prayer within us. When this happens then the water that Jesus put within us will "flow" freely out of us. Theresa of Avila said we will become thirsty for this thirst. Thomas Aquinas said Jesus does not give us the higher gifts of the Spirit (love comes to mind here) because we do not desire them deeply enough nor do we truly ask for them. He will not withhold the Spirit from those who ask and pray for such rivers to flow. I wish I had understood this much sooner. But then I am not so sure that some decades of life experience were necessary to reach this place in the journey.

Practicing Mental Prayer

Once we realize that prayer is “friendly intercourse” with God, rooted in his deep love for us, we can begin to talk about the method for how we do this. I offer, based upon my own reading of various spiritual directors and great theologians, some observations on how to pray in this way.

First, we cannot speak to God “intimately” unless we are in contact with him personally. This doesn’t just happen in conversion but daily as we approach him directly. Because we are in personal contact with God we make preparation. This is not a matter of human works offered up to save us in any sense of the word. It is our placing ourselves in the presence of God, turning ourselves to him by means of true godly thoughts. I begin to relate to God more intimately when I place myself in his presence, turning aside to him by means of good thoughts. This includes both biblical words and insights from other Christian teachers who thought deeply about the Word of God.

Second, to prepare we must again and again convince ourselves that God loves us. During my early days I always wondered, “Have I been truly saved?” Maybe I’d not done something right. Maybe I needed to walk forward and “rededicate” myself. Then after I came to appreciate much of the Reformed confessional tradition I wondered, at times, “Am I among the elect?” And, “Did Jesus really die for me?” How do I know for sure? More confusion followed. Now I know that unless I am fully persuaded that God loves me then I will never pray as intimately and personally as I should. This is why “friendly intercourse” with God is so precious to me.

In order to know that God loves me I choose readings, from the Bible and other wonderful treasures rooted in the Bible, that reveal his love to me. But reading is not enough.

Third, I must meditate by reflecting upon this truth. God loves me. He really does love me. This is the greatest truth in all the world. I must chew this and digest it and revel in it. All revealed truth can manifest God’s love to me but each day I try to get hold of one reading that does this for me. I make direct use of various thoughts contained in things I choose to meditate upon in quietness. My goal is always to convince my heart that God really does love me. What often happens is that this love springs up spontaneously in my heart after some time alone.

Fourth, there begins a colloquy, or a dialog with God. I tell God, with whatever words spring to my heart, how much I love him, how much I want to love him even more and that I desire to advance in his holy love this very day. I also tell him that I want to demonstrate his holy love in my actions this day by doing his will.

Fifth, I come to the center of real prayer. This is the heart of it all. In order to facilitate the dialog I do three things:

1. Give thanks. I not only tell God I love him but I thank him for all the benefits and blessings that he has given to me. “Count your blessings, name them one by one . . .”

2. Offering. Aware of all my blessings I ask God what I can give to him? He does not need anything from me but as my heavenly Father he loves to receive my good resolution and my decision to give. What can I do this day to show my gratitude to him?

3. Petition. The consciousness of my weakness and humanness prompts me to then pray for divine help.

You can practice mental prayer without the last three acts but they fill out the practice and make it applicable to every aspect of my daily life.

When my soul freely reflects upon a text read, a thought pondered, I can pass into dialog, or colloquy. This is at the heart of the process of mental prayer. As for tools that specifically help me I just keep looking and finding an incredible treasure of ancient and modern resources. Here I draw from the whole Christian tradition—Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant. Here ecumenism deepens my sense of the whole church throughout all the ages seeking the same God who loves me in this place, right now.

Why Should an Active Person Embrace Solitude, Silence and Contemplation?

Why would any Christian embrace a life of solitude, silence and contemplation? If you, like me, were trained to be an activist for Christ then this question is one of proportion in the end. The call to mission is a call to faithfulness to the Great Commission and this means to be actively serving the Lord. It just seems much too passive to be of any real good to Christ if you live too much of your life in solitude, silence and contemplation. At least this is how I was taught for decades.

I have shared with several of my closest friends how learning to be less active, contemplative and more intentional about times of silence have all begun to shape my own journey. This contemplative way has been taught over the course of Christian history but it has not been common among evangelicals, at least not during the last hundred years or so. If we have been anything, by training and temperament, we have been activists.

Common to monastic life are the practices of silence, work, poverty, chastity, obedience, listening to Scripture, prayer, and humility. But anyone can readily see that these practices are not designed for monks alone. In some way all of us are called to embrace these practices, even if we are actively serving Christ in business or in the life of serving the church as clergy.

Carthusian monasticism stresses that entering into silent anonymity before God can make your prayer life more fruitful for the salvation of the world. Indeed, it is believed by Carthusians that this kind of prayer life accomplishes more than anything else that we can ever do on our own. The Carthusian monk understands the primacy of contemplation in the life of the Church, a truth we neglect almost entirely. This understanding of the primacy of contemplation derives from the truth that the Christian life is all of grace -- a life freely given us by Christ.  No method or technique born of human industry compels God’s response to us. This is always true if grace is the active principle of how he deals with us. The New Testament , however, abundantly reveals that the humble petition of a repentant sinner always moves God to act. This is the foolishness of the cross, the power of God grace in the gospel.

The world says you should make a name for yourself, especially if you want to be successful. But in the mystery of God we are most faithful when we magnify him above all else. In the words of a Catholic blogger I recently discovered: “In the world, your self-reliance makes a positive impression on most people for a short time, but whatever you accomplish by your cleverness eventually will be forgotten. In God, your reliance on Him will be viewed negatively by most people for most of your life, but what God accomplishes by your trust will last forever.”

What happens when things do not go as you expected? This has been my story for several decades, especially after age 40. And then what happens when you are not understood or successful as you were taught from childhood that you should be? Christ never promised that we would be treated with regard and enjoy universal success, even serving in his kingdom and for his church. He clearly told us to take up our own cross and follow Him. Yet this is exactly where the foolishness of God comes in. A Catholic professor of spiritual theology puts it this way: “In the wisdom of the world, such humiliation is a doom worse than death -- but in the wisdom of God, this is a hidden blessing through which new life can flow into the Church by our loving obedience.”

This describes well what I am learning in my own weakness while waiting before God in solitude and quiet. An ancient anonymous writer, the author of the classic Cloud of Unknowing, said, “No matter how grievously a man has sinned, he can repent and amend his life.” Thank God this is true for all his children.

I will say more about contemplation later but suffice it to say that meditative and contemplative prayer is calm and unhurried. There is no set amount of material to be covered and no set pattern one follows. Contemplation will sometimes allow you to focus on one sentence, even one word, for hours or weeks. What is going on in this context is an inner dialog with God.

The core of such communion is love. Dialog with the indwelling Trinity includes praise, sorrow, yearning, thanking and petitioning but when quietness and simplicity rule then steps and procedures become less and less important. This has been my experience but I am but a novice. What you seek, if you seek to practice contemplation, is union with God in simple loving attentiveness. The desire is not to empty the mind, in a Buddhist fashion, but rather to allow the Lord the time and space to take over when and where he chooses. In contemplative silence you become far less aware of yourself and more aware of him. It is not done in a hurry and it cannot be learned as a method, at least as most of us know methods regarding prayer and meditation.