Conversation or Monologue

PRAYER 2
Prayer 2
For UCB
3 Min Script

Well hello again, and again I am still thinking about Prayer and still wondering about lots of things concerning this subject. Here is one for starters, why is it that for lots of people it seems to involve lots and lots of talking. I guess they think it’s a one way conversation, a monologue rather than a dialogue.
I have travelled quit a lot and seen other things concerning prayer, prayers that are written on paper and then pined to trees to fly in the wind, lots of religious people seem to have thing like beads to pray with, and perhaps these things are helpful I don’t know, but still it all seems very one way. I was in one country in a taxi going somewhere when suddenly the driver stopped wrote something on a piece of paper jumped out of his car and put it in a box on the wall along with some money. When he got back in the car I was curious and said what was all that about, he smiled and told me it was a prayer?
Another place I was in there was crowed of people around a big glass box with a statue in, I sidled up to one of the people on the edge of the crowd and asked do you speak English, always a good way for me to start a conversation, they responded yes, I said please tell me what is this crowd of people doing. He said Oh we are praying to our God. So then I asked, why is your God in a big glass box he smiled benignly at me and said Oh you see if the God wasn’t in a box everyone would touch the God and the God would get dirty!
Now it does seem to me that the Gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, birth, death and resurrection is about resorting the broken relationship between us people and Father God now for a relationship to be a real one it does seem to me that their ought to be a two way communication, rather than a one way. Now I know that some people just talk a lot and expect others to just listen, but I really don’t think God is like that. As well Jesus said to his followers I don’t want to call you servant because a servant does not know what the master is going to do rather I call you friend because I want you to understand, and I have told you what the Father has told me – that’s in Johns Gospel chapter 15 verse 15.
Now I don’t think that communications ended with the first follower disciples, hey I am a follower and a disciple of Jesus and maybe you are too. I want to know what the Father business is don’t you, yes I know we have Scripture, but this is a new age and whilst the values don’t change some things do, for example I don’t worry to much about falling of Donkeys like Paul, but I do mind crashing my car! So yes I do want a two way conversation.
So it seems to me that I need not only to talk to God – Pray – I need also to listen to God, to see what he is saying to me. Let me tell you a little story, I worked with a guy called George Canty and he would sit on a platform in a meeting and often tell me things that were going on in people lives in the audience – people he had never met and neither had I. I said to him one day, why does God tell you these things and not me, he said maybe you are not listening, may be you talk too much. I remember going home and lying in bed and saying to God (Praying that is) God I do want to talk to you, I do also want to hear you, can you talk to me.
Now I would say God spoke to me and I guess it was in my mind, but it seemed as though God said yes I will talk to you I have always been hear and wanted to, but you have been busy talking to me and not listening. So I said ok God if this is you I am talking to and not something in my own head or having a conversation with myself help me to know that it really is you. God said to me, well now what does and He gave me a chapter in the Bible in a certain book and said what does it say?
I lay there thinking and thinking and finally I said to the voice in my head, actually I don’t even know how many chapters are in that book, I don’t know if it has that many chapters and I certainly don’t know what that verse says even though I have though and thought.

The voice in my head said well now there is that many chapters in that book, and the verse says and the verse ticked through my head word for word, and the voice in my head ( I would now say God) said, ok you have a Bible right by your bed on the cabinet now look it up and see if it really is that verse word for word. I switched the light on picked up the Bible and noted oh dear this is not the usually version that I use, if I know the verse it won’t say it in the language that I am used to reading so I have got this wrong right away this cannot be God, and the voice said, did you think that I did not know what version of the Bible was by your Bed! How embarrassing. I read the verse word for word.
I know God wants to talk with us, learning to listen is the hard thing and hearing correctly is sometime harder, we will talk more about that next time.

Adrian L Hawkes
For UCB 3 min spots
Editor A Brooks
W. 1033