For my 15 minutes of quiet time tonight, I was led to do something I’d never done before… a listening prayer. With my notebook in my lap, I asked God for guidance in a specific area of my life where I felt I needed great help and then I waited and listened and then wrote whatever it was I believed God was telling me. It was an amazing experience. Prayerful listening is not something I’m prone to - anyone who knows me understands that I have a very hard time with this. Lately, I’ve found myself putting extra effort into the discipline of silence - even with friends. While I’ve always known that it isn’t necessary to fill every silent space with noise while with friends - in practice, this is very hard for me as I always seem to have something to say. This, of course, carried itself over to my relationship with God. My prayers are talking prayers where I fill the entire time with my own discourse of stuff I want Him to take care of with as little effort from me as possible, thank you very much. Amen.

Tonight - I listened - really listened. I asked and earnestly waited expecting God to provide guidance - and He didn’t disappoint. Naysayers among you will dismiss this as an experience where I basically cleared my mind and finally let the neurons think without interruption… I know better. While everything I wrote down is sensible and, when viewed in hindsight, quite obvious… when analyzed in detail, you realize there are many answers to the problems for which I’d requested guidance. What I got was one for each - not a series of things to try, but a specific thing to do. There is an indescribable peace and satisfaction that comes from being given a single answer and being challenged to apply it.

I asked God how I can be more of a blessing to my family: the answer I received was to give them the first 30 minutes of each day after work. First, sit down with my wife and just listen to her talk about her day or tell her about mine if she would rather, or simply snuggle with her for a little while. Then, once done with that, take time to read to Zoë from her Bible (she loves this, by the way) and then play with her - dance, laugh, crawl, jump - whatever. While 30 minutes seems like a pittance - right now, it’s more like 10 minutes and there’s no snuggling, no playing, and very little talking. I spend the time being self-centered and trying to figure out how I can fulfill myself after a full day at work. Yeah - there’s a Godly attitude for ya… Lord help me.

For work, I asked God to help me to stay focused - what can I do? Start each day by looking over my tasks and creating a to-do list with specific elements that are required to get the tasks done. This seems simple - but for me - this will take great effort but will enable me to take my day and break it into bite-size chunks. Realizing interruptions are inevitable - the to-do list is designed to be a framework for my day - not a legalistic enterprise. No feelings of remorse are allowed… I’m gonna start tomorrow (if I remember - Lord, please help me remember.)

Finally - I asked the Lord what the next steps should be to take my disciplines more seriously and move spending time with Him beyond the routine… He told me to go on a 2-week media fast starting on Sunday. This would mean two full weeks without television, movies, mindless surfing (even searching for wiki info about some trivial data I think I really need to know TODAY), mindless news reading (in fact, just avoid the news altogether), mindless computer time (though blogging will be okay - but no upgrades to the system or fixing some bizarre bug that’s bothering me). I’ve done this once before and it’s incredibly enriching. The biggest rule is that you take the time you normally spend on mindless entertainment and use it to spend quality time with the Lord and your family.

Well, tomorrow (actually in about 20 minutes) it will be my 41st birthday. What a time for this sort of reflection. I’m excited about my birthday - not just because of the presents - but because this is the first birthday in recent memory where I am not reflecting on the past with an unhealthy (and sinful) focus on the question, “How can this be all the further I’ve gotten in this many years?” No - tomorrow is a celebration of the fact that God has been gracious to me. There is much to be thankful for and much to look forward to as I move forward drawing nearer to Him and knowing full-well that He will be faithful to draw near to me and continue towards completion the work that He began in me.