“Try me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my thoughts”(Psalms 139).
The man is praying as if he himself doesn’t know what is inside him, as if the key got locked, and the unlocking code was lost. He calls on God to help him to “know” his heart.
The man knows that the heart always betrays, always fails, in critical moments it always turns an enemy. Therefore, only the Lord can open, try the heart, reveal the thoughts.
“See if there’s wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” – this is what a man prays, who doesn’t know himself, but desires salvation; this is what he prays, who has experienced falls and stumblings. He prays that God may preserve, redirect, expose his secret desires and purify and set him free. This is how a person who longs for salvation prays.
“Wondrous are the ways of the Lord,” so says the Scripture. But our paths are somehow boring. A daily routine awaits us, and such a life cannot be called wondrous.
Is your home a home? How to join routine life and wondrous paths? This is possible through the inner world. We must learn to put our inner self in the path of the Spirit. We must live in the Spirit and move in Him. When we obey the Holy Spirit, we learn new ways — we gain new experience of the spiritual world with God.
It is us who have to build these bridges and roads. This is unlikely to happen by itself.
If you don’t have a mystery, a secret life with God, where it’s only you and Him, then you have no intimacy with God. No love. But where there is a mystery with God, there will be fruit. I insist that we have one-on-one time with God.
Why is silence needed? God said and it began to happen. Why don’t we hear many words of God in Eden? «God shall not keep silence, but He does also keep silent.
We have to have this ability to listen. When we close our eyes to prayer – what do we do by that? We withdraw in solitude. To be alone, to be alone with God.
Your beloved child or husband or wife can’t be with you. You must be alone, and God requires only “you” from you.
The Lord may require you to put “your Isaac on the altar.” The Lord held Abraham, Isaac was not sacrificed, but it was already a completely different image – both Abraham and Isaac became different. The Lord then said to Abraham He could see that Abraham feared Him.
We must dissociate ourselves from everything for prayer. Christ said: “Whoever does not renounce all that he has, cannot be My disciple.”
We must learn to stay alone. We get focused then. We must have this secret road, trample it through, so that it becomes a “fast lane.” This is the road “from depth to depth”. From our eternity to His eternity. This road must be well-tended, it is a secret relationship with Him.
When a man has learned only to chat and giggle, it is immediately evident that this person is superficial, he doesn’t like silence, he doesn’t like to abide in silence. People who love to chat and giggle, who don’t like to keep silent, are not able to entrust their lives to God.
I can’t imagine that chatty people can then pray a sound prayer. Don’t say you have such a temperament. Temperament comes from the experience of your life, your habits. Genetics is an important aspect, but one can and should fight laziness and indolence by discipline.
In order to leave the routine of life, you need to transit to the inner thing. So that “I” may dwell not in the external man, but in the internal one. Your “I” can have a firm place in the external: it knows the shop prices, where and what to get, and it communicates this to the world, such a carnal person.
If we want to make our life wondrous (not with events of worldly life), namely spiritual, there is only one way to do this – to transfer our “self” to the spiritual level and begin to strengthen the platform.
This is not only a creative platform, which won’t make you a man of God. Many musicians and artists are miserable people. Move to the spiritual level!
Love delights only when it gives itself. The love that receives is selfishness. It will manifest itself sooner or later. If you and I are not converted into giving, we don’t experience miracles. There will be no wondrous life.
We must turn our heart to giving. When we have this, we will take joy in the happiness of our neighbor, even if you yourself are not too happy. This is the real joy – to rejoice in the joy of your neighbor.
How to transform your routine life? Tomorrow you will get up, as always, things will happen as always. But this is life, it flows away. There is a bad thing – years go by, old age getting near, and there are less and less chances to change anything.
We are not Buddhists, we don’t “earn points.” We want to be loved by our sons!
This is the way to transform your life – only if we are turned to the spiritual, and if we have a mystery – a secret, where I am spinning a “whirlwind” with Him.
Live not within yourself, but in Him. Those who are God’s are one man. Move to yourself. You become not so important for yourself.
By an effort of our will, by an inner decision we can build up our lives wondrous and miraculous. But the routine we live in can destroy us. We shall be insipid uninteresting people.
When you have no experience, you have nothing to share – only «stolen» stories of someone else’s experience. It is horrible when a man of God has no inner experience, inner revelations.
It is possible to live in signs and wonders, if you move yourself into Christ and your way into wondrous and miraculous works of God!