vladimirgrebenar The direct word of God is a speech to man similar to people talking to each other through verbal communication. A key feature of such speech is that man hears God’s messages through the bodily sense of hearing. An example from the Bible is when God addressed young Samuel, and he thought that the priest Eli was calling him: “That the Lord called Samuel: and he answered, Here am I. And he ran unto Eli, and said, Here am I; for thou calledst me. And he said, I called not; lie down again. And he went and lay down” (1 Sam. 3:4-5). As many as three times Samuel went to Eli with the same question, but only the fourth time he responded to God.
This way of speaking of God to man is not common. The Bible describes other events when God spoke in this way. For example, during the baptism of Jesus on the Jordan River (Matt. 3:17) or during the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor (Matt. 17:5). God, the Father, spoke the same message from heaven to those present: “This is my Son, my beloved, whom I have chosen.” When we analyze the events of the Scripture where God spoke directly in a natural voice, we realize that he communicated in this way only to humble and sincere people to whom he conveyed messages for the benefit of the community.
Most people think that verbal communication is the most effective form of communication between people. However, this is not true. People often say one thing and think another, and such speech is easily distinguished as untrue. Voice color, facial gestures, body movements, and other nonverbal factors have a stronger effect on emotions and reveal what a person feels and thinks, better than spoken words. Verbal communication is not the most effective form of communication between people, so it should come as no surprise that such a way of communication is not used by God when addressing man, except in rare and exceptional situations.
As far as prayer for business needs is concerned, we should not expect to hear a natural voice and simple guidelines on what to do with completely certain outcomes and without risk. It is not God’s narrative of communicating with man when He calls for His endeavors! When the Lord calls, He always expects our lasting trust in Him on the path to mutual success! This is the mistake of many who think that God should be happy that they have decided to dedicate some time to prayer or have gone on a pilgrimage or a spiritual retreat, so they expect that they will quickly solve the accumulated problems with God while continuing going themselves their own old dead ends.
That is why God does not give any answer to such people for a certain period of time, so that the converts may be tested in trust in Him. God is the best business partner who wants to give full trust, but He expects such an approach from us towards Him. God’s trust should be earned by a tried life in faith. It is often heard about the business relationships of successful people how they quickly agree and shake hands around an agreement, because they have great trust in each other. When there are such relationships of trust between successful business people can they be different with God?
The heart is man’s most sensitive spiritual sense when it comes to communicating with God. Man most often receives messages from the Lord into his heart. When we read a biblical text, listen to a good exhortation of a person dedicated to God, or meditate on a prayerful stimulus, the heart is the spiritual organ by which we feel those messages and discern their source. Man carries the truth about himself in his heart. Honesty, humility, modesty, justice, love and other virtues come from the heart.
By contrast, corruption, insidiousness, intrigue, selfishness, pride and other evils also come from the heart. The heart is the medium through which we communicate with the spiritual worlds of good and evil. Man’s heart is under the constant influence of good and evil, and he voluntarily decides to which side he will entrust his heart, as well as his life, future, and eternity. God is unobtrusive and wants man to choose good in his free will.
If man clings to evil, contrary to God’s will, God respects the will of man, who prefers to choose evil. The devil is a bully and wants to conquer man by force, constantly offering him lies as the truth. The devil does not respect our will and wants to destroy us at all costs, but he does so by seduction and flattery. Man chooses the side with his heart and the heart is the mirror of our commitment. The heart has a written history of our life “program code”, i.e. the truth about ourselves. God looks at our heart when we verbally say prayers, because in the heart he sees what we cling to more, truth or lies.
Unfortunately, many pray only with their lips, and their hearts are full of insidiousness, selfishness, pride, vanity, and all kinds of evil. Jesus strongly condemned the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and scribes, priests and religious teachers at the time, who looked very pious in front of people, but were full of envy and selfishness: “He answered and said unto them, Well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me” (Mark 7:6). Are our prayers spoken in accordance with the truth written in our hearts?
When we pray for business ventures and decisions, God looks into our hearts and finds the underlying motives for doing business. If the motives are noble, for the benefit of others, in accordance with our inclinations and possibilities, challenging and seek trust in God, the prayer will be answered. If the motives are false, for the benefit of ourselves, harmful to others and our family, and the work for which we have no education or inclination motivated solely by profit, prayer is not to the will of the Lord. The truth about the motives is written in our heart. How can a sincere and righteous believer recognize the will of God in his heart? God has more confidence in us than we have in Him or in ourselves. He invites us to great challenges and deeds. His call to the heart causes confusion of the mind and touches the feelings of the heart. With the heart we feel the inclination and longing for that challenge, and the mind is confused about “how it will be.”
That is why the confusion of the mind and the peace of the heart are the hallmarks of God’s important callings. We receive messages in our hearts by listening to our inner senses when we meditate on the Scriptures, during and after the rosary, during and immediately after consuming the Body of Christ, during and after prayer in tongues, interpretation of tongues, prophecy… It is necessary to find peace for a while, at least for a few minutes, maybe half an hour, an hour or longer, and listen, letting God speak into our heart: “And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed” (Mark 1:35). By doing so, we open the space for God to act actively in our lives. Man is great and grows when he allows the Spirit of God to be active in him: “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30).
Imagination is a particularly important channel of communication with God. We mostly attribute imagination to some childish behavior. We often say of someone who is creative that he is imaginative. Ignatius of Loyola especially emphasized the importance of imagination in recognizing the will of God through meditation and contemplation of the Scriptures and the mysteries of the life of Jesus. Meditation is such a prayer in which one uses reason, intelligence and the will to grasp the general meaning of a written message that has a narrative equal for all people. An example of a meditation event for business people is when Jesus called Peter to ministry, but before that He called him to a business decision that seemed unreasonable to Peter (Luke 5:1-11). Although Peter was an excellent fisherman, he fished all night and caught nothing, and Jesus called him to cast his nets again in non-fishing time of the day, not far from the shore where there are no fish.
Peter had enormous resistance at first, but he quickly changed his mind, obeyed Jesus, cast nets in the faith where with a rational mind he would never have achieved great business success. The nets were torn from the burden of all kinds of fish. Peter obeyed Jesus and made a great business gain that day! The content of the text is very short, but one can reconstruct the event and learn all the important facts that are not written down. Although the text does not say so, it is clear that Peter approached the shore by boat to hear Jesus speak only because he did not catch anything that night, because if he had, he would not have approached, but would have waited for the multitude to disperse, and only then he would have moored his boat and brought out the catch. This was Peter’s first encounter with Jesus. Peter let Jesus into his boat after a business failure, and the boat was the property of his business or craft as we call it today.
Through meditation, this event can be imagined. In meditation, the imagination is under the control of the mind. Based on this event we can conclude that the Lord can allow some business decline to make it easier for us to get to know Him and let Him into our daily affairs. Jesus asked Peter if He could enter his boat, which means that Jesus wanted to enter our affairs, but only if we let Him. Another way when the imagination comes to the fore even more is through contemplation, that is, when the mind is subordinate to the imagination. It is a prayer experience which is a special gift of God and which man cannot create with his own strength.
A man who meditates relaxed at one point enters a dream-conscious state, a state in which the imagination takes over and in which the Holy Spirit uses imagination to send an important message to man for his life or for other people. Contemplation, unlike meditation, is focused on the life of the praying person and does not have a general narrative, but a specific message for the life of the praying person. An example of contemplation of the same scripture event would be that a man imagines himself at one point in that event, listening to the Lord telling him to cast nets in a particular place, which would mean that God will bless a new direction or a new endeavor. The effects of contemplative prayer can be different and require a lot of prayer experience for us to be able to interpret them.