Listen, Obey, Serve

I Finally Stopped Talking Long Enough to Listen

How Centering Prayer Turned God From a Question Into a Relationship

There is a command running through the Bible that I somehow managed to overlook for most of my life:

Serve God.

It is there again and again.

God,      through Moses,      told the Pharaoh:

“Let my people go,      that they may serve me.”

Deuteronomy tells us to love God

and:

“serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul.”

Joshua repeats it.

Jesus declares:

“You shall worship the Lord your God,      and you shall serve Him only.”

And Paul brings it directly to Christians:

“It is the Lord Christ you are serving.”

Once I finally noticed this theme,

I wondered how I had managed to walk past it for so many years without seeing it.

It was a little like discovering that the giant sign on the front door had been there the entire time.

Then came the question that changed everything for me:

How can I serve God if I never listen to Him?

I Did All the Talking

For most of my life,

prayer meant talking to God.

I could ask God for help.

Thank Him.

Praise Him.

Confess my sins.

And present Him with a surprisingly well-organized list of things I thought required His immediate attention.

I was very efficient.

I could probably have issued God a numbered agenda.

But eventually I realized something rather embarrassing:

I was doing nearly all the talking.

That is a peculiar way to build a relationship.

Imagine calling your best friend every morning,

talking for twenty minutes without stopping,

giving them your complete list of problems,

telling them exactly what you think should happen,

saying goodbye,

and hanging up before they can answer.

Then the next day,

you call again and wonder why the friendship isn't getting any deeper.

That was my prayer life.

I talked.

God listened.

And apparently I had decided that was a perfectly reasonable division of labor.

Centering Prayer Turned the Conversation Around

Centering Prayer changed that relationship for me.

Instead of beginning my day by telling God what I wanted Him to do,

I began asking:

“Lord,      what would You have me do today?”

Then came the difficult part.

I had to stop talking long enough to listen.

That was much harder than it sounds.

Silence can feel strangely uncomfortable when you've spent a lifetime believing that every empty second requires a new thought.

But little by little,

I learned to become still.

I learned to wait.

I learned to pay attention.

And prayer began changing from a speech

into a relationship.

My Scientific Mind Wanted Evidence

This wasn't easy for me.

I had spent forty years practicing veterinary medicine.

Medicine trained me to question everything.

Show me the evidence.

Show me the study.

Show me the control group.

Show me the mechanism.

If something couldn't be observed,

measured,

tested,

or demonstrated,

my professionally trained mind immediately reached for a large rubber stamp marked:

UNPROVEN.

That skepticism served me very well as a veterinarian.

Patients deserve treatments based on evidence,

not somebody's enthusiastic hunch.

If a bottle claimed to cure everything from arthritis to baldness to a bad golf swing,

I wanted considerably more than a smiling testimonial.

But eventually I realized that I had carried the laboratory into places where laboratory instruments could never answer every question.

I Wasn't an Atheist

I wasn't an atheist.

I wasn't declaring that God did not exist.

I was an agnostic.

My position was essentially:

“I don't know.”

I couldn't see God.

I couldn't touch God.

I couldn't hear God.

And nobody had handed me a peer-reviewed,

double-blind clinical trial titled:

The Existence of God:      A Multicenter Randomized Study With 10,000 Participants.

So I remained unconvinced.

My scientific mind wanted data.

God apparently wanted relationship.

For a long time,

those two were not on speaking terms.

How Do You Serve Someone You Never Hear?

There was an even bigger problem.

I didn't understand that   serving God   was supposed to be central to my life.

I had attended church.

I had received religious instruction.

I had heard many Bible stories.

Yet somehow this enormous biblical theme had never become personal to me.

Scripture said:

“Serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul.”

Jesus said:

serve God alone.

Paul said:

“It is the Lord Christ you are serving.”

But I kept returning to the same practical question:

How am I supposed to serve Someone I don't know how to hear?

That question eventually led me directly to Centering Prayer.

“God,   How May I Serve You Today?”

I began setting aside quiet time every morning.

And I asked one simple question:

“God,      how may I serve You today?”

Instead of immediately filling the silence with my own thoughts,

I tried to become still.

I paid attention to convictions,

thoughts,

impressions,

and callings that arose in my heart.

But I also learned that listening requires discernment.

Every thought that enters my mind is not automatically a message from God.

My mind is perfectly capable of producing original material without divine assistance.

So I began testing what I believed I was receiving.

Does it agree with the teachings of Jesus?

Does it lead toward love?

Truth?

Mercy?

Humility?

Forgiveness?

Service?

Does it produce the fruit of the Spirit?

Then came the most important part.

When I prayerfully believed God was calling me to do something consistent with His love and truth,

I tried to obey.

Trust Doesn't Come in a Fifty-Pound Bag

At first,

I had very little trust.

But trust is an interesting thing.

You cannot order a fifty-pound bag of it

and have it delivered to your front porch.

There is no overnight shipping.

No tracking number.

No message saying:

“Your trust is eight stops away.”

Trust grows through relationship.

Through communication.

Through experience.

Through obedience.

Day by day,

as I acted upon what I prayerfully believed God was placing upon my heart,

my relationship with Him changed.

What had once been an intellectual question—

“Does God exist?”

gradually became something deeply personal:

“God,      what are we doing today?”

And something else began changing.

Me.

The Fruit Started Becoming Real

Paul describes the fruit of the Spirit as:

love,

joy,

peace,

patience,

kindness,

goodness,

faithfulness,

gentleness,

and self-control.

For many years,

those were simply beautiful words in the Bible.

Then they began becoming personal.

I found more peace.

More joy.

More patience.

More love.

Especially,

I began experiencing a love for God and for other people that I had never understood before.

The fruit of the Spirit stopped being a vocabulary list.

It began becoming the evidence of God's work within me.

Not because I had suddenly become perfect.

Let's not get carried away.

But something was changing.

And I knew I wasn't doing it alone.

The Gifts Are for Service

Scripture also tells us that the Holy Spirit gives different gifts for:

“the common good.”

Paul speaks of wisdom,

knowledge,

faith,

healing,

miraculous works,

prophecy,

discernment of spirits,

tongues,

and interpretation.

These are not trophies for spiritual achievement.

They are not medals God pins onto somebody's chest because they reached Platinum-Level Christianity.

They are gifts.

And Scripture says the Spirit distributes them:

“just as He determines.”

That distinction matters enormously.

Their purpose is not to make us look important.

Their purpose is to equip us to serve.

Centering Prayer,      for me,

is not about becoming spiritually impressive.

It is about becoming:

spiritually available.

“Here I Am,   Lord”

My prayer gradually became:

“Here I am,      Lord.”

“What would You have me do?”

Acts gives us another remarkable piece of this picture:

Obedience and relationship belong together.

The more I learned to trust God,

the more willing I became to obey Him.

And the more I obeyed,

the more deeply I learned to trust Him.

Trust led to obedience.

Obedience deepened trust.

And somewhere along the way,

God stopped being merely a subject I was investigating

and became Someone I loved.

Knowing About Jesus Is Not the Same as Knowing Jesus

This also changed how I understand what it means to know God.

Knowing God is much more than knowing information about God.

I can read a biography of Abraham Lincoln.

I can learn where he was born.

What offices he held.

What speeches he gave.

What he believed.

I could probably become very annoying at a Lincoln trivia night.

But Abraham Lincoln and I are not friends.

Why?

Because friendship requires more than information.

It requires:

communication,

trust,

time,

relationship,

and love.

That realization made Jesus' warning in Matthew 7 deeply important to me.

Jesus describes that there are people who call Him:

“Lord,      Lord,”

and even point to remarkable works done in His name.

Yet Jesus says:

“I never knew you.”

Those words stopped me cold.

The question is not merely:

“Do I know about Jesus?”

The deeper question is:

“Am I actually living in relationship with Him?”

Friendship Requires Listening

For me,

that relationship begins every morning before I even get out of bed.

I become quiet.

I listen.

I ask:

“Jesus,      how may I serve You today?”

Then I try to obey.

That simple practice has transformed my understanding of God.

The God I once wasn't sure existed

became the God I now seek every morning.

The Holy Spirit I once understood mainly as a theological concept

became central to how I understand my daily walk with Christ.

And serving God stopped feeling like an abstract religious obligation.

It became an adventure.

A new one every morning.

God,      and the Holy Spirit,      became the very best companions I have ever known.

And unlike some traveling companions,

they never ask every twenty minutes:

“Are we there yet?”

Sometimes the Assignment Is This Website

Some mornings,

that adventure has led me right back to this website.

I believe I was called to create the Centering Prayer Society

and to keep writing these articles,

one subject at a time.

So I write.

Not because I believe I have mastered God.

Quite the opposite.

I have finally learned that my life becomes richer when I stop insisting on mastering everything and become willing to listen,

obey,

and serve.

I believe God has helped guide the subjects I study and the thoughts I explore.

Sometimes an article begins as only a small idea.

Then I pray.

I search Scripture.

I compare passage after passage.

And suddenly the words begin flowing.

What began as a trickle becomes a river.

And I find myself learning while I write,      and again learning when I format and edit what I've written.

Sometimes I find myself astonished by what was written here.      And I find myself asking,

"Who really wrote this?"

From “Does God Exist?” to “What Are We Doing Today?”

That may be the greatest change of all.

For most of my life,

I asked:

“Is God real?”

Today,

I begin with an entirely different question:

“God,      what are we doing today?”

That is a remarkable distance to travel.

And I didn't travel it by becoming smarter.

I traveled it by becoming willing to listen.

For years,

I believed prayer was primarily about getting God's attention.

Centering Prayer taught me something very different:

God already had mine.

I was the one who needed to pay attention.

The Question That Changed My Life

Scripture repeatedly tells us to:

love God,

obey God,

walk with God,

serve God,

and serve Him with all our heart and soul.

Jesus tells us:

“You shall worship the Lord your God,      and you shall serve Him only.”

Paul tells Christians:

“It is the Lord Christ you are serving.”

Those scriptures finally forced me to confront one simple truth:

I cannot intentionally serve God

while never taking time to listen for His direction.

So Centering Prayer has become the beginning of my day.

I surrender my agenda.

I become still.

I listen.

I discern.

And when I believe Christ is leading me toward His love and His service,

I try to obey.

After spending so many years asking whether God was real,

I now wake each morning with a question I never imagined would become so important:

“Lord Jesus...      how may I serve You today?”

And then,

instead of immediately giving Him my suggestions,

I finally do the thing that took me seventy years to learn.

I stop talking.

And I listen.

Questions for prayer:
          What do these passages reveal about God?
          What response does it ask of me?
          Is the impression I receive consistent with the character and teaching of Jesus?
          What loving and faithful action should follow?

Daily prayer:

How may I serve You this day?”