The Prayer PracticeSample

Day 3: Listening to God

Most of us start our prayer life like a child; by speaking other people’s words. As we mature, we begin to pray our own words. But in time, we desire not just to speak to God, but to listen to God. To hear God’s voice.

The desire to hear God’s voice in prayer is a Spirit-generated desire in the heart of a disciple of Jesus. In John 10v2-6, Jesus says that all those who are truly his “sheep” – a word picture for his disciples – will “know his voice” and “follow” it.

There’s an ancient prayer in Deuteronomy 6v4-5 that’s called the Shema. Shema is hard to translate into English, because it has two meanings: it means to hear, but also, to obey. In fact, when Jesus was asked what the most important command in all of Scripture was, he quoted the Shema. For Jesus, to listen and obey is the single most important thing in all of spiritualIty. But to do this, we must come to trust that obedience is not an obstacle on the path to a happy life, but that it is the path. And once we come to trust Jesus’ good intentions toward us; the driving aim of our life will increasingly become to listen for his voice.

The question is, how? There’s no one-size-fits-all formula for how to discern his voice, but let me offer you six ways.

First, in Jesus’s life and teachings. Throughout the New Testament, Jesus is called “the Word”. Hearing God’s voice begins and ends with Jesus: the Word. All the other ways God communicates ultimately come through Jesus and point back to Jesus.

Next, Scripture. The Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck said: “[Holy Scripture] is the eternally ongoing speech of God to us.” God often uses our reading of Scripture to communicate with us.

The third way we hear God’s voice is through circumstances – opportunities, closed doors, limitations, giftings, relationships, the situations we find ourselves in – God is often in those circumstances, coaxing us forward.

Fourth, is desires. One of the ways we discern God’s voice is by listening – both carefully and critically – to the desires of our heart. Some of our desires, left unchecked, would lead us over a cliff to ruin. But other desires are actually God at work deep within us..

Fifth, prophecy, dreams and visions. God can speak through dreams or our senses for others. Often, it’s as simple as opening your imagination to God before you pray over a person, then offering that to the other person as a possible word from God, to be then tested against Scripture and in community.

Finally, listening prayer, which is simply waiting quietly for God to speak into your mind or heart. All our thoughts must be, like prophecy, tested, or weighed to determine their source. But the truth remains, God can and will speak directly into our thought life.

All of these ways of listening to God require what the New Testament calls “discernment.” The ability to sift through ideas and events and thoughts and feelings and clearly see –what is my own imagination, my flesh or sin, what is the evil one, and what is God’s voice coming to me. Without this, we could get wildly off base.

How do we grow in the ability to discern Jesus’ voice from all the other voices in our head? Simple: by long hours of listening. Our brains come to recognize, almost immediately, a person’s voice who we know well. Think of the saying, “I’d know that voice anywhere...”

So, lean into quieting your mind and listening for God’s voice. But hearing God’s voice takes more than a quiet mind, it also takes a surrendered heart. Like Mary, we must begin by sitting at Jesus’ feet, listening for his word.