Yesterday, I spoke about prayer and listening to God. Often our prayers are a one way conversation. We might go to a quiet room and then we start talking and praying to God. But we might have this feeling as if we are talking into this great nothingness. We feel foolish and after about 5 minutes (if we make it that long) we give up saying, “this is pointless!” We know that we have other things we can be doing that are more productive than talking to ourselves.

I am sure you would be hard pressed to find a Christian who would tell you that prayer is not important. However, so many Christians communicate a very different message through their actions. So many Christians fail to perceive prayer as beneficial and productive. We think, “God already knows me better than I know myself. Why do I need to tell him anything?”

Here is the thing. I believe our struggle with prayer is not so much what we have to say, but about what God would have us hear. We were born to talk. We can talk without thinking and we do that way too often. But listening requires intentionality. Listening is much harder than talking and takes effort. I have yet to meet a person who is a better listener than a talker.

What I want to share with you in this email is how I pray when I am intent on listening to God. Keep in mind what I share with you is what I do. It is not necessarily the one right way. This is what I do. I share this as one way in which you can be intentional about listening to God.

I use what is called the One year Bible reading plan. You can find it at oneyearbibleonline.com. True to it’s title, this reading plan helps me read through the Bible in a year. I like this reading plan because it has four separate readings – one from the Old Testament, one from the New Testament, one from the Psalms, and one from Proverbs. The specific reading plan is not important. What is important is this is a systematic way in which I expose myself to the breathed of what God has to say in the Bible. Remember I said listening takes intentionality. This is the way I am intentional about hearing.

As I read through my daily reading I am praying and asking God to reveal what he wants me to hear and to know. I am looking for that one word, that one sentence, or that one Bible verse that jumps off the page and might speak to a situation or circumstance I am facing in life. Sometimes a verse may speak to me, but at the moment I am not sure why. God knows why, but he has yet to reveal to me why this verse is so important. When I see that verse that stands out I will write is down and complete the reading for the day.

When the reading is complete and I have the Bible verse written down, I will then go back and take another closer look at this verse. I will then begin to write some observations about the Bible verse. I will ask what is this Bible verse about? Why did the author write this? Are there other Scripture verses I know which support this verse or are similar? I will make as many observations as I can, making sure to carefully write them all down.

After I make these observations, I will then ask, “God what do you want me to do with all this?” Another name for this is called application. I will look at how I can apply the Scripture and the observations to my life.

The last thing, after I have done all that is prayer. So we have Scripture, Observation, Application, and Prayer. An easy way to remember this is the first letters in these four steps are S, O, A, and P. They spell SOAP. I borrowed this process from another pastor who uses this process in his own devotions. I have found it brings some wonderful blessings.

The main reason it is so powerful is because it does not begin with me talking at God, but listening to God. The starting point is not what I have to say, but what God is speaking through the Bible. I let his Word guide my prayers and not my circumstance. Another important step is that I will write down my prayers. When it comes to listening to God there are two indispensable tools. One is a Bible and the other is a pencil. If you are serious about listening to God I can’t think of any two more practical helps than these. Write it down!

If you do nothing else, start writing down your prayers. It goes back to what I shared earlier. We can talk without thinking, but it is much harder to write without thinking. When we put this organization into our thoughts and prayers, it opens the door for God to respond.

You might be saying, “what about my circumstance? How do I bring before God what I want to say?” I would just say, “Listen! Let God speak and trust he will speak to your circumstance. He will. Give God the opportunity to say what he has to say. He wants to bless you in a tremendous way if you will hear him.”