Best 3 quotes of Mark E. Thibodeaux on MyQuotes

As I grow in my prayer life, my soul becomes a delightfully cluttered attic, filled with random graces that do not all fit together in some perfectly ordered system. The purpose of some graces will be immediately apparent in my life, but the meaning of others might evade me for a while. I must resist the temptation to clean up the messiness of my graces and must not try to come up with immediate answers for the questions that arise from them.

Prayer is for listening; review of prayer is for discerning. It is important that I resist the temptation to analyze what is going on. During prayer, I will be tempted to play the sports commentator, reviewing every move with instant replay. I will be tempted to ask myself if the prayer is going well, if it is really God speaking or merely my imagination, if I'm handling this conversation well and so on. This ongoing analysis will only distract me from listening for God with my full attention....I may miss God's voice because I am too preoccupied with evaluating the prayer then and there. During the prayer itself, I must simply be present and listen attentively to whatever is said by whomever. There will be plenty of time to sort it all out later.

Not only do I need friends who share in my desires and convictions, and not only do I need mentors who can support, encourage and advise me as I journey to God, but I also need a community with whom I can participate in the proclamation of the Word and the celebration of all that the Words means to me. Like the baby Jesus, I need a "holy family" to belong to. I need to belong to something bigger than myself. If I don't, then I run the risk of developing a sort of God-and-me spirituality with no support systems to hold me up when I am weak, no prophets to challenge me when I am wrong and no party-mates with whom I may celebrate the Lord's goodness in my life.