Talking With God (Paraclete Essentials) - Christian Devotional Book for Prayer & Spiritual Growth - Perfect for Daily Meditation & Bible Study

Had to buy another copy! What happens with books like these is we wind up giving them away. They are hard not to share.Talking to God means prayer--that essential ingredient of spiritual growth for any individual--if we have the humility to pursue it--and to attain anything else from God. The title, therefore, is appropriate; however, Archbishop Fénelon tells us talking is only one part of this.I suppose we could ask, "Why talk to God?" What can we expect from this? Teaching the disciples to pray, he told them, "Do not babble like the pagans" and "do not worry and say, 'What are we to eat?' or 'What are we to drink?' or 'What are we to wear?' ... Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all" (Mat 6:32). I think that one of the answers that we find in these pages is that we talk to God so that God can talk to us. Maybe better is that: we can learn to let God talk to us. I am sure that most of us have read in the Gospel of Saint John, a foretelling by Jesus that this would happen. Before he ascended to heaven Jesus promised to send the Holy Spirit, and so, "when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth. He will not speak on his own, but he will speak what he hears, and will declare to you the things that are coming. He will glorify me, because he will take from what is mine and declare it to you" (Jn 16: 13-14).How will this occur? How does the Spirit operate with us? In the chapter "The Interior Voice of the Spirit," Archbishop Fénelon opens with the words,---------------------------------- It is certain from the Holy Scriptures that the Spirit of God dwells within us. There he acts, there he prays without ceasing, groans, desires, and asks for us what we do not know how to ask for ourselves. The Spirit urges us on, animates us, speaks to us when we are silent, suggests to us all truth, and so unites us to him that we become one spirit. This is the teaching of faith, and even those teachers farthest removed from the interior life cannot avoid acknowledging it to be so. ... Alas! What blindness is ours! We suppose ourselves alone in the inner sanctuary, when God is more intimately present there than we are ourselves. You may say, "What then! Are we all inspired?" Yes, without a doubt! But not in the same way the prophets and apostles were. Without the actual inspiration of the Spirit of grace, we could neither do, nor will, nor believe any good thing. We are, then, always inspired, but we incessantly stifle the inspiration. God does not cease to speak, but the noise of the world outside us, and the noise of our passions within, prevent our hearing him.---------------------------------- So, we should come to understand that in stifling the Holy Spirit, we behave no different from those who refused to listen to the prophets or those who shut Jesus out of their lives. And so, we kill the spirit within us. We deaden our consciences to our own disadvantage and even destruction. Why? Archbishop Fénelon supplies a very plausible answer: that the Spirit of truth "speaks to the unrepentant, but, stunned by the noise of the world and their passions, they cannot hear him. The interior voice to them seems to be a fable."Archbishop Fénelon therefore instructs us wisely, "We must lend an attentive ear, for his voice is soft and still, and is heard only by those who hear nothing else! How rare it is to find a soul still enough to hear God speak! [although] ...God is continually speaking to us." It almost seems analogous to the narrow gate that Jesus speaks tells us about. Is this the reason Jesus says that there are few that actually pass through? Good food for thought!If God is speaking to us continuously, we must heed the Archbishop's words and learn to "still our souls" and--talk to God--but more importantly, let God talk directly to us--and hopefully soon!