# 1 What is prayer/meditation?

We have to learn how to pray. However, prayer is more than a skill to be learned. Prayer is a two-way communication with God, in which we express a love relationship with Him. The most important aspect of prayer is the heart-attitude of wanting to be with God, wanting to be in communion with Him.

Years ago, I didn't understand this. I thought prayer meant telling God what I wanted Him to do for me. If I really wanted it, I would pray more words, more often. In the back of my mind, I thought that if I prayed enough words and prayed them often enough, then I could get God to do what I wanted.

At first, it was very difficult to pray. I'd sit down in my big prayer-chair, planning to pray for 5 minutes. I felt uncomfortable and awkward. Gradually, I learned to pray for 5 minutes, then 10, then 15. Later, I learned how to pray for a half-hour or an hour or more. In the beginning, it was always a struggle.

St. Teresa of Avila, in her autobiography, described the initial phase in her process of learning to pray; she described it as laborious. She compared it to watering a garden, bucket by bucket. As she grew in her friendship with God, it became easier to pray. She compared that to the use of a water wheel. Later, it became much easier to pray; she compared this stage of her prayer life to springs of water. She no longer had to labor to water the garden, because springs of water came up without effort on her part. In this stage of prayer, the Spirit of God does the “work” of prayer for us. We must cooperate by giving God our time and heart-attitude for prayer. Yet it is almost effortless; prayer becomes a delightful time spent with our Beloved.

St. Teresa compares the last stage of prayer to a drenching rain. She calls this stage union. If the character of our spirit is pure and holy, as God is pure and holy, we can be truly united with God.

But whoever is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.
(1 Corinthians 6:17 NAB)

This is the real purpose of prayer: to enable us to be united in one spirit with God. Prayer is our opportunity to ask Him to reveal His will to us so that we may join Him in what He is doing. God is so good; prayer is our opportunity to offer our love, our praise, our thanksgiving and our worship to Him. God is so generous; prayer is our opportunity to pray blessings on others and ourselves.

Information from To Live by the Spirit Workbook, pages 186-188

# 2 How does prayer relate to our hearts?

God's Word touches that intimate and interior place: our heart. When the Catechism of the Catholic Church speaks about prayer, it talks about the heart.

2562 Where does prayer come from? Whether prayer is expressed in words or gestures, it is the whole man who prays. But in naming the source of prayer, Scripture speaks sometimes of the soul or the spirit, but most often of the heart (more than a thousand times). According to Scripture, it is the heart that prays. If our heart is far from God, the words of prayer are in vain.

2563 The heart is the dwelling-place where I am, where I live; according to the Semitic or Biblical expression, the heart is the place “to which I withdraw.” The heart is our hidden center, beyond the grasp of our reason and of others; only the Spirit of God can fathom the human heart and know it fully. The heart is the place of decision, deeper than our psychic drives. It is the place of truth, where we choose life or death. It is the place of encounter, because as image of God we live in relation: it is the place of covenant.

Information from Heart Basics Workbook, page 44

# 3 Does God speak to people?

Many times throughout the Bible, we read that God speaks to people. On rare occasion, it is an audible voice, heard through the ears. For example, the people around Him heard God speak when Jesus was baptized in the River Jordan (Matthew 3:17) and again at Jesus' Transfiguration (Matthew 17:5). Also, the people around St. Paul [Saul] heard Jesus speak to him when he was on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:3-7).

However, usually, God speaks with the still, small voice of the Spirit. God normally speaks inside our spirit in a quiet, little voice that cannot be heard with our ears. God's voice is heard by intuition, a function of our spirit that enables us to communicate with Him in a two-way conversation. We talk to God, either aloud or inside; He talks to us so that we hear God speak inside in the intuition of our spirit.

If we do all the talking in this conversation, then it is a monologue rather than a dialogue. On the other hand, if we grow spiritually so that our spirit is strong, if we are quiet before God, if we listen, then we can hear Him speak inside us in that tiny, whispering sound. We can have a dialogue with God.

Information from To Live by the Spirit Workbook, page 88

# 4 How does God speak to people through prayer?

Ideally, prayer is a two-way conversation with God. Not only do we talk to God, but He talks to us in such a way that we can hear the still, small voice of the Spirit in our spirit. Hearing God comes in two ways: sought and direct.

Sought communication happens when we bring some issue before God and ask for guidance or insight.

Direct communication happens when God initiates the interchange. God speaks sovereignly, whether or not we are in prayer, whether or not we are engaged in anything spiritual. God simply says whatever He wants to say at that moment.

Initially, most of our communication is sought. As we grow stronger in our spirit, it ends up the other way around. God speaks in frequent, direct communication with the spiritually mature, revealing to them nuances of what He wants and how to more deeply follow His will.

Information from To Live by the Spirit Workbook, page 89

# 5 What does it mean to "test the spirits"?

We need to grow spiritually so we can develop discernment of spirits. That means we need the ability to assess truth or error and the ability to determine the source of spiritual phenomena in order to avoid deception and delusion.

As we listen to the “voices” within us, we need to test the spirits to determine the source of the voices we hear, because the voices may sound similar to the inexperienced. There are three sources.

• We can hear God speaking in our spirit.        
• We can hear our own thoughts in our mind.        
• We can hear thoughts injected into our mind by the devil.

God is always patient with inexperienced believers as long as we are growing. And God is pleased (not offended) when we obey His directive to test the spirits. However, in spite of our best efforts, we will make some mistakes along the way. That's okay. We just keep on trying to learn how to discern God's voice from that of our own thoughts or injected thoughts from evil spirits. Practice helps; we will get better at this over time. It's well worth the effort to develop our intuition so that we can carry on a real conversation with God.

Information from To Live by the Spirit Workbook, pages 90-91

# 6 When we "test the spirits," how can we
discern whether it's God or the devil?

There are inherent differences between the ways God communicates with us and the counterfeit ways that Satan and his evil spirits work in our mind.

• God may communicate His desire to use us and do great things through us. He often praises, uplifts and encourages us. Yet God's emphasis is on our righteousness in Jesus and our great worth as His children.
• Satan's counterfeit praise builds self-righteous pride and inordinate self-love. The devil implants thoughts that focus on self-will, self-gratification, self-glorification. Satan imparts thoughts that focus on our “great spirituality” or the “great importance” of the ambitious works that we think up to do for the Lord.
  
  
• God doesn't want us to think up things to do for Him.  God wants us to discern His will and do His will. Sometimes God may put us in the limelight. Other times His will is that we be “hidden.”
• Satan will inject thoughts insisting that we are too valuable in spiritual work to be hidden away in the closet. He will give us multiple flashing thoughts of all the things we could do for the betterment of the world. In this way, Satan and his evil spirits lead us to follow our plan instead of God's plan, our timetable instead of God's timetable, our will instead of God's will.
   
  
• God communicates with us as individuals and with the Church as a whole, building us into a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of His own, so that we may announce the praises of God who called us out of darkness into His wonderful light (cf. 1 Peter 2:9).
• With cunning determination, evil spirits plant their flashing thoughts, cultivating deadly results: sowing doubts and disrupting the Body of Christ by fostering fear, falsehood, jealousy, strife and competition among believers and unbelievers alike.

Information from To Live by the Spirit Workbook, pages 159-160

# 7 How does prayer facilitate spiritual growth?

As we open up our spirit to His Spirit, God communes with us, gradually strengthening us day-by-day as we spend time with Him in prayer. As we grow stronger, we can more clearly perceive God communicating with us in our spirit and revealing His will. Whenever we obey His will, we grow stronger spiritually, so that we can receive greater understanding from God. Then when we read the Bible, our spirit can comprehend the spiritual meaning of the Scriptures. The Word of God nourishes and strengthens our spirit as we receive the spirit of wisdom and revelation.  In his letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul writes that he is constantly praying that:

…the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation resulting in knowledge of him. (Ephesians 1:17 NAB)

Information from To Live by the Spirit Workbook, page 84