PE6: The Practice of Intercessorial Listening


As I've stated and written before...

For many of us, prayer can feel intimidating.  Especially when we start talking about lofty prayer concepts like intercession, supplication, and prayer and fasting.

Intercession:  Entreaty in favor of another, especially and prayer or petition to God on behalf of another.
Supplication:  Personal petition (usually for oneself); earnest or humble request.
Prayer and Fasting:  Prayer is life shared with God.  Fasting involves abstaining from engaging in or consuming something.  While most fasting centers on food, it can also include abstaining from electronics, media, a particular action, or something else (of your choice).  The act of combining prayer with fasting creates a space in your life and allows you to focus and deepen your communion with God.

I’d like to invite you to approach intercession in a way that may feel a little different from the ways in which you’ve approached it previously.  I want to invite you to listen intently to the people around you--especially to your family and friends.

AND… as you’re listening to them, to do your best to, very intentionally, focus in on what they're wanting and hoping for.

AND… as you’re able to “see and hear” what those around you are wanting and hoping for, to invite your heart to want and hope--for those you’ve been listening to--to have the exact things they say they’re wanting and hoping for.

AND… as you’re doing this, to offer those wants and hopes to God.

I call this whole progressive practice “Intercessorial--or Priestly--Listening.”

Intercessory prayer doesn’t have to be formal, long, or spruced up with religious sounding words.  It can be--as, I believe, preferred by God--as simple as: “Jesus, I so want SJ to have exactly what I see and hear he’s wanting and hoping for.”

That’s it, my friends!  That’s intercessory prayer… intercessorial listening… priestly listening… just three seconds of intentional heart-focus based in your love for someone you're taking the time to truly listen to.  Such prayers are so very precious and pleasing to our Savior... to the O-one who wants so much for each one of us.

--

Today's MRL Maxim:  Listening to someone is one of the loudest forms of kindness you can offer that one.

--

Today's MRL Call-to-action:  For the next seven days, go and be such a prayerful listener to (and for) all the people around you, especially your family and friends.

--

So... there you go, friends.  Go, and think upon these things.  Do the work, and BE revellious.

Until next time…

We (and that includes you and me!!)...

Are the few... the proud... THE REVELLIOUS.

Dave out…

_______

ABOUT DAVE


Beyond being an imager, lover, imitator, and follower of Jesus Christ, Dave Brown is nothing more than a contemplative artist of life in desperate need of His Master:  The Triune God.  His greatest desire is to experience loving and Divine intimacy with God Almighty (the Trinity).  After that, it’s to walk before Them—in and with great holiness, humility, and revelliousness of heart—all the days of his life.  To meet his needs, Dave works as an ecological engineer, inventor, writer, life- and business-coach, and personal trainer (in mixed martial arts, holistic life-discipline, and meditative prayer).  If you’re interested in engaging with Dave in conversation or through personal one-on-one training in living revelliously, you can connect with him through MyRevelLife.com and The Revellious Podcast.  If you’re interested in his engineering and inventiveness sides, please visit his other website here.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

BP23 Life and Work

Work here in the west is, typically, so different from what I’ve witnessed (and experienced directly) in other cultures. It was through my exposure to some of those cultures, as well as those many times when I went up north to live with the monks, that I discovered how much I wanted to simplify my life, take my time at things, and work (for money) a lot less. I still work on a lot of things, but most of them are personal projects, and I take precious time with them. I’ve discovered that the less I own, the less I’m owned by things. Even the things I do “own,” I treat more like books I’ve borrowed from the library: They’re not mine, and they have a fast-approaching expiration (or due) date. The fast-approaching expiration date doesn’t mean I need to try to cram in as much enjoyment of them as I can. To me, it means “They’re not mine, and it’s my responsibility to return them to Their Owner in pristine shape soon.” Presently, I devote most of my time to enjoying the moment; being
Read more

BP25: Make Exercise (and Movement) a Part of the Culture of Your Life

Culture (from Webster's ): An integrated pattern of living; the characteristic features of everyday existence; a set of conventions associated with living one's life. While most everyone knows physical exercise (and just moving a lot) is important, few of us exercise, move well, or move enough on a consistent basis. The verbalized reasons for this are varied, but I think they can all be paired down to just one: At the point of choice, those who don't exercise chose something else. If this is you, be kind to yourself, and take responsibility for the choices you've made. It's not that you don't have the time, space, money, or energy to exercise. These are all smoke-screen lies we tell ourselves and other people to keep us from taking responsibility for how we look and feel. As difficult as this might be to swallow, the body you have at 50 is 99.999999% your fault. What I mean is this: How you look, feel, and move is directly the result of the millions of day-to-da
Read more

BP 31 Faith, a Meditation...

Image
What is faith? Faith is the yielding—the Trinity-breathed, Trinity-ordained yielding—of oneself to God in and through the organic (that is, the naturally supernatural or supernaturally natural) consent of one’s absolute belief. The soul drive of faith is to breed “Divine Heartfulness (that is, a very-present oneness [ see below ] of heart and mind) with God.” And… once such oneness is realized [ apprehended ], faith then becomes the ineffable [ largely indescribable and inexpressible ], ongoing P erson-to- p erson experience of He in whom one previously believed but does so no longer because The Object of One’s Previous Belief (that is, God Almighty, The Trinity) is now known and loved intimately… and with a certainty that shatteringly-bursts open what existed previously in one’s heart as little more than just “a hunch.” Once one truly knows and loves—or, rather, once one knows and experiences himself [ or herself ] to be known and loved by—The One Who Knows (that is, The Eternal
Read more