Tip: when the prayer sounds like a monologue

In conversations with many people over the years, I have heard comments hinting that prayer often sounds like a monologue, that God often seems silent even though He promises to answer, that God feels distant. Prayer is a mystery as it consists in us speaking to an invisible Person. We cannot see God with our eyes. We cannot hear his response with our ears. The mystery of prayer involves a different kind of vision and hearing.

1 Corinthians 2: 9-10 - “However, as it is written: 'What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard and what no human mind has conceived' - the things that God has prepared for those who love him - these are the things that God has revealed to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the profound things of God “.

We seemed confused when our physical senses (touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste) do not experience a spiritual rather than a physical God. We want to interact with God as we do with other human beings, but that's not how it works. Yet, God did not leave us without divine help for this problem: he gave us his Spirit! God's Spirit reveals to us what we cannot understand with our senses (1 Cor. 2: 9-10).

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Help, to be with you forever, also the Spirit of truth, which the world cannot receive, because it neither sees nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you and will be in you. 'I will not leave you orphans; I'll come to you. A little while longer and the world will no longer see me, but you will see me. Because I live, you will live too. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, you in me and I in you. Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves me. And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him '”(John 14: 15-21).

According to these words of Jesus himself:

1. He left us with a Helper, the Spirit of truth.
2. The world cannot see or know the Holy Spirit, but those who love Jesus can!
3. The Holy Spirit dwells in those who love Jesus.
4. Those who love Jesus will keep his commandments.
5. God will manifest himself to those who keep his commandments.

I want to see "the one who is invisible" (Hebrews 11:27). I want to hear him answer my prayers. To do this, I need to rely on the Holy Spirit who lives within me and is able to reveal God's truths and answers to me. The Spirit inhabits believers, teaching, convincing, comforting, counseling, enlightening Scripture, limiting , rebuking, regenerating, sealing, filling, producing Christian character, guiding and interceding for us in prayer! Just as we are given physical senses, God gives His children, those who are born again (John 3), spiritual awareness and life. This is an absolute mystery to those who are not inhabited by the Spirit, but to those of us who are, it is simply a matter of stilling our human spirits to hear what God is communicating through His Spirit.