Listening for Wisdomنموونە

Listening by Reading the Bible

How can we learn to hear God’s voice?

We open our Bibles (or Bible apps) and let God’s Word saturate our whole being. Listening to God’s voice always starts with the Bible. The book Atomic Habits has shown me how important habits are to our everyday lives. If you start by just setting your alarm and opening the Bible, you have made progress. “If you can get one percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up 37 times better by the time you’re done” (Atomic Habits, page 16). Habit stacking (attaching a new behavior to an old one) can help. For example, quiet your mind and listen to God’s Word while doing the dishes. While folding laundry, thank God and pray for each child whose clothing you are folding.

The psalmist describes the righteous person this way: “His delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night” (Psalm 1:2, ESV). The word “delight” (hephets in Hebrew) is related to a word that can mean to bend or to be inclined towards. As we listen to God speak through Scripture, we get to know our God and the more we know him, the more we love him. My mom and dad were Bible translators. They exegeted the meaning from each verse of the Bible, as they sought to translate God’s Word into another language in Southeast Asia. I grew up with a beautiful example of what listening to God through the pages of Scripture looks like. They delighted in God’s Word, and they felt his delight in them.

In life, we can lean our hearts and minds toward many things. I can lean into my phone or my child as I talk to him. Usually, we lean into someone when we are listening. Spiritually, we need to lean toward hearing from God through the pages of Scripture, as we intentionally spend time seeking the Lord.

As we seek to hear God, we must look for what he said to the original audience so we understand what he is saying to us. We seek to know God not for what we want him to say (in order to fit our own agendas). We desire to know the who behind it all: the One who delights in us. We are seeking to learn his voice.

As we pour our hearts and minds into the pages of Scripture, we will see how God inclines his ear to us and leans into those who fear him. Plants and trees often grow toward the direction of light. There is a scientific term for this: phototropism. “Trees do not sense which way is up; rather, their growth follows the direction from which light comes. This phenomenon is called phototropism, . . . . bending toward the light.”[1]

Let’s keep an awareness of God always at the forefront of our minds—bending toward his delight and learning to hear his voice. As you do this, you will gain confidence in hearing his voice and grow in wisdom and obedience to him.

1 C. Claiborne Ray, “Q & A; Hillside Trees,” New York Times, March 13, 2001, https://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/13/science/q-a-hillside-trees.html.