Deeper connections with God

By Rev Sandy Brodine

I’ve been leading a set of Confirmation classes with 13-15-year-olds lately.

It has been a wonderful and enriching experience. The class has been learning about God: Father Son and Holy Spirit and has been experiencing a different way of praying each week.

So the question did not come out of the blue.

The teen in question had just been wondering how she could know what God might be saying to her if she couldn’t actually hear God’s voice speaking to her directly. “If I can’t hear God speaking to me, how do I encounter God?”

This great question stopped us all in our tracks and we pondered it together. I wondered what the rest of the group thought. How do you hear what God is saying to you?

The adult mentor who had joined the group to get to know the Confirmation candidates better, shared how he often sought advice from wise Christian friends.

He’s been part of a small group for over 30 years, and knows that if he’s a bit stuck, the wise friends who have known him most of his life can help him know what to do. He considers that they help him encounter God and hear God’s voice in his life.

We then went on to talk about the prayer practices we had been learning as part of our course.

We’d practised Breath Prayer and Lectio Divina (slow and meditative reading of a bible text).

The group had found these had helped them slow down and to focus on God.

We wondered if this was a way to help us hear God’s voice? Was prayer more than asking questions and expecting answers? Might prayer really be about listening?

We then moved into the prayer practice for this week, called the Examen Prayer.

This is usually done as a prayer practice at the end of the day where we focus on where we have experienced God, where we might have done the wrong thing and how God would forgive us and might help us do better next time, and then we prayed for God to be present in our day tomorrow.

Might this prayer practice be another way that we might encounter God, and hear God’s voice in our lives?

Young people have profound questions that they need to ask.

I wonder how often we can find time and ways to slow down and listen, and engage together with them as we all wrestle with the big questions in life?

I wonder: how can we help each other learn to encounter God in deeper and more profound ways?

Rev Sandy Brodine is Younger Generations ‑ Education & Strategy Coordinator within equipping Leadership for Mission