Prayer as Conversation

11 The angel of the LORD came and sat down under the oak in Ophrah that belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, where his son Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress to keep it from the Midianites. 12 When the angel of the LORD appeared to Gideon, he said, "The LORD is with you, mighty warrior."
13 "But sir," Gideon replied, "if the LORD is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his wonders that our fathers told us about when they said, 'Did not the LORD bring us up out of Egypt?' But now the LORD has abandoned us and put us into the hand of Midian."
14 The LORD turned to him and said, "Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian's hand. Am I not sending you?"
15 "But Lord," Gideon asked, "how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family."
16 The LORD answered, "I will be with you, and you will strike down all the Midianites together."
17 Gideon replied, "If now I have found favour in your eyes, give me a sign that it is really you talking to me. 18 Please do not go away until I come back and bring my offering and set it before you." And the LORD said, "I will wait until you return."
19 Gideon went in, prepared a young goat, and from an ephah of flour he made bread without yeast. Putting the meat in a basket and its broth in a pot, he brought them out and offered them to him under the oak.
20 The angel of God said to him, "Take the meat and the unleavened bread, place them on this rock, and pour out the broth." And Gideon did so. 21 With the tip of the staff that was in his hand, the angel of the LORD touched the meat and the unleavened bread. Fire flared from the rock, consuming the meat and the bread. And the angel of the LORD disappeared. 22 When Gideon realised that it was the angel of the LORD, he exclaimed, "Ah, Sovereign LORD! I have seen the angel of the LORD face to face!"
23 But the LORD said to him, "Peace! Do not be afraid. You are not going to die."
Judges 6:11-23

What an extraordinary story! A young man, going about his ordinary business in a time of great danger has an encounter with God that will change the fate of the nation Israel. This single conversation and its aftermath will turn him into a great warrior/leader and release Israel from a long suffered bondage under Midian.

If listening is a part of our prayer life, so too must be its corollary – dialogue or conversation. God wants not only to speak to us, He wants to interact with us. Our partnership with Him is neither silent nor one-sided but one of give and take. The difficulty in this is the inherent inequality of status between ourselves and the Omnipotent, Omnipresent and Omniscient God who created us. How can we possibly hear effectively from a being so far beyond us in understanding? How can we add anything to such a conversation? And yet without this exchange, the feedback and checks to understanding it provides, we cannot communicate or receive communication from God – not because of His limitations but our own.

Here we see such communication between God and Gideon generating surprise and fear but also providing assurance and direction to Gideon. It is a conversation which was broken off for a while and reengaged with later. It continues throughout the story and produces the growth we see in Gideon’s character as well as the strategy for battle which defeats Israel’s foes.

Rosalind Rinker in her book, Prayer – Conversing With God, says: “Prayer is the expression of the human heart in conversation with God. The more natural the prayer, the more real He becomes. It has been simplified for me to this extent: prayer is a dialogue between two persons who love each other.” She goes on to explain that there are four aspects to this form of daily prayer:
1. “When we converse, we become aware. Aware of the other person, his rights, his privileges, his feeling, and if we converse long enough, his total personality.
2. “Good conversation implies that we must take turn about and do it gracefully. When one person does all the talking we call it (if we are polite) a monologue.
3. “Finally, it should be clear that to converse we must all pursue the same subject, and pursue it by turns. We are, in a sense, the listening and speaking members of a team. We have agreed to agree upon our subject of conversation, and to do this each one must decide what is relevant and important at the moment.
4. “ To carry on a conversation of any significance or interest, each person must use his memory to recall, his patience to wait, his alertness to jump in, his willingness to get out, and above all his capacity to hold back the disruptive. In other words, he should be in tune.”

If this is not already a natural part of your prayer repertoire, why not try it today? Try speaking to God and waiting for His response. Try asking questions and listening for the answers. Try waiting for Him to direct the path the conversation might take. He may speak in audible words, in impressions, in the “voice inside your head” in pictures or even by touching your feelings. As you become more familiar with the form of dialogue so you will you grow in understanding of your conversational partner. Jesus says that the sheep come to recognize the shepherd’s voice. So too will we grow in knowledge and love of our Lord.

Mike Clarkson