What should you do when you want to hear from / experience God?

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ethereality said:
God is everywhere, the Church teaches. It seems then that, rather than spend 45 minutes traveling to sit in the same room with the Tabernacle, I should pray and meditate in my bedroom. (cf. Matthew 6:6)
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The church provides a treasure chest of things to choose from “when you want to hear from/experience God.” Lots of people have shared their suggestions, all good ones; your own, above, is an excellent way to build your relationship with God, who loves you sooooo much.

The scripture you quoted goes on …

9 “Pray then in this way:

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
10 Your kingdom come.
Your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And do not bring us to the time of trial,
but rescue us from the evil one.

I heard once that a group of people set out on a quest, each on their own, to meditate on this prayer, then meet periodically to share their experiences. After 2 years, some had not yet exhausted the first two verses.

Blessed be God. May His will be done in our lives.
 
Regarding “pray to God in your bedroom”…
We have telephones, texting and Skype where we can just go online from our bedrooms and talk to our loved ones any old time.

So why bother seeing your mom, your girlfriend, your brother etc in person ever, when you can just talk to them from your bedroom without being in their physical presence? Of course this is ridiculous and people will go and actually visit their loved ones and spend time in their physical company.

Same for Jesus…
 
I spend time with Jesus on Sunday after Mass, but … well, I hate to say it, but I don’t see that it’s making any difference or that Jesus is even there.
 
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I am frustrated and depressed because I have already tried all these suggestions and am still feeling sad and alone.
 
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Well, you have two choices. You can keep praying and seeking Jesus, or you can give up on Him. I think the first choice is the better one, because if you do that, then even if you never see or feel Jesus’ presence during this life, you will likely see Him after death. With the latter choice, you not only have no hope of seeing or feeling Jesus’ presence in life, but you might be seeing something else after death that you don’t want to see.
 
It seems to me your biggest problem is seeing prayer as nothing more than a petition and answer.

God is not a vending machine. You don’t insert 100 prayers to get 1 miracle.

The main reason for prayer is to change our interior dispositions. You will never, ever have a satisfying prayer life until you stop expecting things from prayer. Prayer is meant to bring your heart closer to Gods heart.
 
This touches on why I think Pascal’s Wager is an unsound argument: The suffering required to be Christian is not ‘negligible’. (I.e. that premise of the argument is false.) To live my entire life with duplicity of mind, trying to believe and even promulgate something that I suspect is not true, is quite literally maddening, especially given absurdities like this situation: “I know you want to follow me, and because I love you, that’s exactly why I’m frustrating you and hiding and refusing to communicate clearly with you.” It makes no sense.
 
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It seems to me God is speaking to you through his soldiers right here in this thread.

It also seems to me, for some reason, you are not open to listening to what he’s saying.
 
I used to ask if God loved me, until I asked if I loved HIM. Then I realized that I do and He does.

Hope this helps.

Stuart
 
ethereality said:
The suffering required to be Christian is not ‘negligible’. (I.e. that premise of the argument is false.) To live my entire life with duplicity of mind, trying to believe and even promulgate something that I suspect is not true, is quite literally maddening, especially given absurdities like this situation: “I know you want to follow me, and because I love you, that’s exactly why I’m frustrating you and hiding and refusing to communicate clearly with you.” It makes no sense.
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  1. It takes you 30 seconds out of your day to sincerely ask Jesus to come into your heart. Doesn’t seem to be too difficult or create a lot of suffering to me. You’re not expected to spend 8 hours beating down his door for 10 years to get his attention.
  2. You’re not expected to “promulgate” anything at the stage where you yourself are still having doubts. You are a baby learning to walk, nobody expects you to run in a track meet.
  3. This frustration seems to be coming from your own head because you desire some particular response from God and are getting impatient because he’s not providing whatever you want fast enough. Sorry, but God doesn’t necessarily work on our desired timelines.
 
How do you distinguish between God saying something and a human being saying it? In other words, how do you know when a human being is saying his own ideas rather than God’s ideas?

It appears to be the logical fallacy of ‘begging the question’ (i.e. assuming your conclusion as a starting premise): “1. God uses human beings to talk to men. 2. Human beings say God uses human beings to talk to men. 3. Therefore God uses human beings to talk to men.”

To respond to your second point, I am suffering and I have been deceived and hurt by others in the past, and so insisting on reason and facts seems the only way to protect myself from even worse suffering.
 
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Do you not listen to Catholic Answers or EWTN? They regularly talk about “relationship” and “communion” — this means God answering you in a clear way. That is what relationships are — exchange between two parties, not only a one-way street.

I am so sick of hearing this ‘vending machine’ assertion ad nausea. People trying to respond to the claim “God is silent and absent” always bring it up, and I really don’t understand why, except the observation makes you psychologically uncomfortable and to relieve it you blame the speaker.

You directly contradict Jesus when you say we must stop expecting something to follow prayer: Jesus says, “believe that you will receive it”: Go read Matthew 21 and Mark 11 and then get back to me. Jesus appears to say that we must expect to receive it in order to receive it.
 
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ethereality said:
You directly contradict Jesus when you say we must stop expecting something to follow prayer: Jesus says, “believe that you will receive it”:
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You took Jesus out of context. He said, "“Truly I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ it will happen. 22 “And all things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive.”

You don’t give me the impression that you are having “faith” and not “doubting”, nor do you seem to “believe”. You are asking God to do something in order to give you belief. This is not the same as what Jesus said.
 
I don’t want to bicker with you. If the “30-second come into my heart prayer” is all that I would do, then how would my life be any different from the Japanese atheists I live with? Why should I even pray this, since Jesus is supposedly already with me by virtue of my Baptism (and receiving the Eucharist every Sunday)?
 
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Knowledge is true justified belief that it is unreasonable to deny, such as knowing what happens if I drop a flowerpot out of a window.

I don’t know that God is here with me because I am in physical pain and God is not removing it or explaining why He’s not removing it.
 
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ethereality said:
If the “30-second come into my heart prayer” is all that I would do, then how would my life be any different from the Japanese atheists I live with?
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Because atheists don’t believe in God or Jesus and do not open their heart to Jesus or seek Him out. They do not have any belief that he exists and the vast majority of them don’t even care.
You apparently care. That makes you different from the atheists whether you say the prayer or not.
Why should I even pray this, since Jesus is supposedly already with me by virtue of my Baptism (and receiving the Eucharist every Sunday)?
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Because you’re saying yourself that you want a fuller experience of Jesus or God. If you believe he’s already with you, then why are you having doubts all over this thread?
 
Get a spiritual director. You are right where you are supposed to be, even if you don’t like it.
 
Yes, I doubt now and disbelieve because previously I did as Jesus said, praying with faith expecting it to happen, not doubting that it would happen. Years went by and it didn’t happen. I kept up that state of faithful assurance for about a year, I think.

The only thought I have now is that I wasn’t healed because I sin, but this doesn’t seem a good defense because 1 John says everyone sins, and if we say we don’t sin, that we’re liars.

So now I don’t see how we can expect anything from God, and St Augustine’s “Pray as if everything depended on God, work as if everything depended on you” seems very much to support agnosticism — i.e., we can’t expect anything at all from God, and in fact we should expect God to /not/ work any miracles.

So taking Jesus at his word + time + suffering = bitterness.
 
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You’re the one making the choice to be bitter, because you think Jesus let you down.

I’m not making light of it, but honestly, you’re doing it to yourself. Jesus isn’t doing it to you.

I’ll pray for you.
 
Ether,

I didn’t know that you’re in physical distress, so please accept my apology if my response appeared to be trite.

Is your illness causing your doubt about Jesus?

Stuart
 
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