Peggy Reynoso
Train – Develop – Care
I had a love-hate relationship with prayer.
For most of my life, God spoke to me sporadically, usually in times of great need or longing. He also spoke to me regularly through His written Word. And then there were the nudges of the Holy Spirit, but I was cautious about trusting those, as they might have been my own impulses or feelings.
What people called “prayer” was a process I didn’t enjoy. It mainly consisted of a list of requests for which we petitioned God together. We usually barged right into God’s presence, waxed verbose in asking for what we wanted, thanked Him, and dashed out. But God changed that through three life experiences.
The death of my daughter. Our family had gone through ten years of one hard experience after another, and our friends were comparing us to Job. When Paula died, our suffering went to another level. I pretty much ground to a halt. Like Job, I sat in the ashes and argued with God day and night. What carried me through was that God talked back. He poured himself out to me, day after day. I experienced him in ways I never had before.
An intense course of study in spiritual formation. I didn’t want to lose this intimacy with God, so I asked Him to send me help to grow in hearing Him. I was accepted into the Renovaré Institute and studied with Dallas Willard, Jan Johnson, and others. I learned new habits and skills to help me grow in hearing God, and I drew closer to Him.
Developing new habits. One spiritual discipline I worked on was practicing the presence of God moment by moment. Remembering Brother Lawrence’s intentionality from The Practice of the Presence of God, I went back to focusing on being constantly present to God. Keeping my mind on things above was a challenge (Colossians 3:1), but I began to truly experience Jesus as Immanuel, God With Us.
I also asked God to help me distinguish between what I discovered to be four sources of my own inner voice. My inner voice was often my own thoughts, reasoning, and emotions, but sometimes my conscience—my internalized sense of what I ought to do and be. The conscience was easy to mistake for the Holy Spirit, but I learned that while my conscience could be harsh, the voice of the Holy Spirit was always respectful, even when telling me hard things. The fourth source of the inner voice came from our spiritual enemy, who accuses and deceives.
Learning to distinguish between the sources of the inner voice freed me to trust the leading and guiding of the Holy Spirit, and to act on his prompting with more confidence. It also helped me recognize how God speaks, which sometimes is through images or impressions. Now, for me, prayer goes beyond words. It is not something I do. It is a way of life.
