In a meet­ing last week, I led a devo­tional on prayer. I am a huge fan of Wal­ter Wan­gerin and used one of his books as a step­ping off point for our dis­cus­sion. If you have never heard of him, you have to go get any of his books, because they are writ­ten with an elo­quence and wis­dom. Wan­gerin is a pro­lific writer on a wide-range of sub­jects; he’s writ­ten a novel that was awarded the National Book Award (essen­tially, the Amer­i­can novel of the year); books on mar­riage, prayer, adop­tion, the res­ur­rec­tion, inner-city min­istry; he’s even got a book of poetry. His lat­est book is about his jour­ney hav­ing cancer.

Any­way, he has this lit­tle unknown book called Whole Prayer, which is sim­ply a book which dis­cusses how to pray. The book has a sim­ple premise which then becomes pro­found. Wan­gerin makes this propo­si­tion about prayer:

First, we speak,

While, sec­ond, God listens.

Third, God speaks,

While, fourth, we listen.

There is obvi­ously a lot there in those four points. How does one speak to God? What is the process in which God lis­tens? Finally, how does God speak to us? And in what ways can we listen?

As I shared this with some of our staff, one con­clu­sion was made in terms of the read­ing: isn’t it amaz­ing that God is always lis­ten­ing for us. Wan­gerin, in the book, makes this beau­ti­ful anal­ogy of a sick child cry­ing out for her mother and right away the mother comes into her room to attend to her. Almost as if even before the child cries out, the mother is there. As he writes, “And imme­di­ately with under­stand­ing came the active response of a mother whose love is nearly omni­scient, whose heart is almost omnipresent.”

This is no dif­fer­ent then how God attends to me. Even before I know what I need, He does—that is his rela­tion­ship to me as a Father—taking care of me. The Lord is mov­ing ahead of me, try­ing to pre­pare the way so that I can pass through unharmed and unhin­dered. As my favorite Psalm declares:

He brought me out into a spa­cious place; he res­cued me because he delighted in me. Your right hand sus­tains me; you stoop down to make me great. You broaden the path beneath me, so that my ankles do not turn. (Psalm 18: 19, 35–36)