Too Busy Not to Pray by Bill Hybels

Week 3: Chapter 2 — Prayer Is a Two-Way Street

Read Chapter 2 of Too Busy Not to Pray. Key passage: 1 Samuel 3:1–10 (Samuel learning to listen: 'Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening.').

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Most of us are comfortable talking at God, but Hybels pushes us toward the harder discipline: learning to listen.

Discussion Questions

7 questions

1.Hybels observes that most Christians treat prayer like a monologue — a list of requests fired upward — rather than a dialogue. How would you honestly characterize your own prayer life: mostly talking, or genuinely listening too?

2.Young Samuel needed Eli to help him recognize God's voice. Who in your life has helped you recognize when God might be speaking to you? What did that guidance look like?

3.Hybels suggests that God speaks to us in a variety of ways — through Scripture, through promptings of the Holy Spirit, through wise counsel, through circumstances. Which of these channels have you most clearly experienced? Which feels most unfamiliar or uncertain?

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