alone with God. He writes, “The concrete shape of this
discipline of solitude will be different for each person
depending on individual character, ministerial task, and milieu.
But a real discipline never remains vague or general. It is as
concrete and specific as daily life itself.” 5
The fourth hindrance to hearing God talk is lack of interest
in the secret life.
E. M. Bounds (1835–1913), a young lawyer turned pastor,
wrote numerous books on “the business of praying,” including
Purpose in Prayer. Because he arose each morning at four to
be alone with God, I find his words very credible. He writes,
“Secret praying is the test, the gauge, the preserver of man’s
relation to God. The prayer chamber, while it is the test of the
sincerity of our devotion to God, becomes also the measure of
the devotion.... The lingering to stay, the loathsomeness to
leave, are values that we put on communion alone with God;
they are the price we pay for the Spirit’s hours of heavenly
love.” 6
The secret life is not an invitation to dwell in numbness or
emptiness.
But it does require silence.
Many, if not most of us, are just uncomfortable with silence.
Some of us are even afraid of it. In The Way of the Heart,
Nouwen reveals the unique perspective that the Desert Fathers
held toward silence. These experts, who spent extended
amounts of time alone with God, “did not think of solitude as
being alone, but as being alone with God. They did not think of
silence as not speaking, but as listening to God.” 7
I have found that when you quit negotiating your own way,
incessantly talking, trying to manipulate any of your other