Heart to heart

Spending time with God needs practice. Maybe our prayer here and now should be: ‘Dear Father in heaven, please help me to want to spend time with you – and give me a special gift of patience and determination to continue with you each day.’

But how do we spend the time that we give to God? There are surely as many ways of praying as there are people. Bishop Cuthbert Bardsley of Coventry suggests this simple exercise:

• Let go. Relax the tension, remain still.
• Open your eyes to the goodness of God as we see him in Jesus. Rest in his goodness. Let it flood your whole being.
• Thank God. Let gratitude flood your being. Praise him.
• Allow him to prompt you. Let the Holy Spirit take possession of you and guide you. Ask his forgiveness, his help, both for yourself and for others.
• Let God have the whole of you. Take your will and make it his.

One essential piece of advice is to be brief. If you spend five minutes with God each day, at least to start with, you’re taking on quite a commitment. Of course, you can always lengthen the time you spend to ten minutes, half-an-hour, or an hour – but at least you have decided a basic length of time which you’re willing and able to maintain.

How often do we really spell out our deepest needs to God? Imagine that Jesus is with you, and you can say to him whatever you like. What is it that you want to tell him? What is it that you would like to ask?

And then realise that he is with you, and you can tell him and ask him things. And you can also listen. What is it he’s saying to you?

The aim of quiet time with God is not just that we should empty our minds – of all our greedy and petty concerns – but that we should fill them – with the presence, peace and perspectives of God. We want to become deeply engaged with him, and there should usually be some definite action as a result. After all, we’re not indulging in prayer as an escape from life, but in order to be more rightly and fully involved in life.

The insights we receive as we listen for God may seem terribly simple and even obvious, but as we accept and live out the changes God wants to make, we’ll find ourselves living a miracle.

When we spend time with God by ourselves, we’re embarking on our own unique adventure. If we’re angry with God, we must tell him so. If we’re bored, we must confess that too. Unless we learn to locate our real selves, and express ourselves as we are to God as he is, we can never fully enter into prayer.