Listening in Prayer

Sometimes on our retreats we do a thing we call one on one prayer. By that we mean that we create a safe space to speak with individual youth and ask them about what’s on their heart, and then do our best to bring that to God in prayer and listen for how he might guide us. Sometimes this is a powerful moment. Sometimes it’s not.

I remember once recently when one on one prayer was powerful. For context I had been thinking about how it would helpful for me to try to listen more in prayer. So this particular day I decided to listen more deliberately in our one on one prayer.

One of the youth came for prayer; let’s call her Lucy. I asked what she would like to pray about, we talked a little, and then we opened up to prayer. We put ourselves in God’s presence, brought up a couple things that Lucy wanted to pray about, and asked for God’s help. And then I said to Lucy, “Why don’t we take thirty seconds and just listen.”

I didn’t hear much. Or really anything. The image of a present wrapped in wrapping paper came to mind, but that was it. I was going to offer that to Lucy and say, “Hey here’s this image that came to mind; if it helps it helps, if it doesn’t it doesn’t.” But then I thought, maybe I should ask Lucy first if she heard anything. So I asked her.

She said, “Yeah, it kinda felt like God was telling me that it’s going to be ok.”

That struck me deeply, especially since the phrase “It’s going to be ok” has come back to me many times this year in my own prayer. Suddenly telling her about the image of the present seemed much less important. It seemed like I really didn’t need to tell her about it. So I didn’t. Instead we thanked God, put ourselves again in his hands, and closed the prayer.

What’s my takeaway? I personally have been reflecting on how God uses me as an instrument, and how he’s working on deeper levels than I expect.

-Peter Schmidt