Listening to God and Stilling Our Wandering Mind | Discovering Prayer

In this article, Emma Lowth considers some aspects of contemplative prayer, or Listening Prayer. It is part of a series of articles that Discovering Prayer is publishing about different ways of thinking about prayer. Certain arms of the church have viewed contemplative prayer with some suspicion at different times. But when it is part of a healthy spiritual diet of reading the word of God and joining in with a church community, this Listening Prayer - resting with and focusing on God in silent meditation - can be immensely fruitful and help us to become aware of God's presence in our lives. In Romans 8.26, Paul says that the Holy Spirit dwelling within us helps us to pray beyond our own feeble efforts: 'We do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.' It's as though sometimes we need to stop trying to put our prayers into words, because our God is truly unfathomable and, though we need to pray, we cannot possibly know how or what t

In this article, Emma Lowth considers some aspects of contemplative prayer, or Listening Prayer. It is part of a series of articles that Discovering Prayer is publishing about different ways of thinking about prayer. Certain arms of the church have viewed contemplative prayer with some suspicion at different times. But when it is part of a healthy spiritual diet of reading the word of God and joining in with a church community, this Listening Prayer - resting with and focusing on God in silent meditation - can be immensely fruitful and help us to become aware of God's presence in our lives. In