Freeze and Listen

Priest Sergey Baranov is one of the most prominent spiritual leaders of modern Russia. The rector of the Tabynsk Icon of the Mother of God Church in Orenburg, an iconographer, a missionary, and a father of six children — he speaks about God not from theory, but from lived experience: from pain, comfort, prayer, and deep spiritual encounters. Each of his sermons is like a conversation with a close person who understands human frailty and the action of grace. How to hear God? How to enter into prayer not with the mind, but with the heart? How to go through disappointment in oneself and not fall into despair, but trust in God? This book is about inner silence, where Christ speaks. About the path from laborious prayer to a gracious encounter. About the fact that spiritual life begins where we stop acting ourselves and allow God to act.