Listening For God: A Ministers Journey Through Silence And Doubt

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Simon and Schuster, Dec 5, 2000 - Biography & Autobiography - 208 pages
Throughout the past two decades, Renita J. Weems has been noted and praised for her writing, galvanizing national speaking, and pioneering scholarship in the field of Old Testament studies. Yet in the midst of her celebrated work, she was experiencing a profound spiritual crisis permeated by a hollow, painful silence that seemed, at times, to mark an irreparable rupture in her communication with God.
In this deeply affecting book, Weems addresses the believer's yearning for God through periods of inconstancy, vacillation, and disenchantment. Her own spiritual disquietude will be familiar to all who struggle to maintain faith while the details of daily life -- negotiating with children and spouses, caring for ailing parents, living up to professional expectations, developing hobbies, managing finances, and planning for the future -- compete for energy with one's relationship with God. In sharing her own strategies for redefining mundane rituals so that they contribute to reverence and devotion, Weems offers a beacon of light for all believers struggling to listen for God amidst the din of worldly demands and distractions.

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Contents

Preface
15
Stumbling in the Silence
25
Surrender to the Silence
33
A Chance Encounter
42
Teach Us to Pray
50
Ordinary Time
63
Saint Fallow
70
Come Sunday
76
The Tap of an Angel
105
The Itinerant Journey
117
Mothers Day
133
IfI Knew Then What I Know Now
152
Fidelity
160
Eternal Life
171
Lord Theres Been a Great Change in Me
177
The Last Day for Miracles
187

And the Word Became Flesh
85
Revival
91
Too Have a Dream
98
When the Bush Stops Burning
196
Copyright

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About the author (2000)

Renita J. Weems is a writer, Bible scholar, and minister, and the author of Just a Sister Away and I Asked for Intimacy. She lives with her husband and their daughter in Nashville, Tennessee, where she also teaches Old Testament studies at Vanderbilt University Divinity School.