Learning to Listen…to God & to OthersSample

Discerning the Voice of the Lord

Research has proven that you can become so accustomed to a person’s voice that you can identify it even in a raucous crowd.You can even understand what is being said. So, how does that happen? How do you learn to hear God’s voice like that?There is one key ingredient for which there is no substitute - time! Time is the essential element in any relationship.

Finding time for the Lord in your hectic schedule may be one of the greatest challenges in your relationship with Christ. Someone asked Dallas Willard, the great Christian Philosopher, what they would need in order to be spiritually healthy. After a long pause, Dallas said, “You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life."

I spent most of two years praying, studying, and meditating on the 23 times Jesus prayed in the gospels. I eventually wrote a book about it. I wanted to know the secret of Jesus’ prayer life. And I found it! Jesus often spent time alone with the Father, but most of that time was spent quietly listening, not talking. The Father trained Jesus’ ear to hear His voice. Read that verse in Isaiah 50:4. This is how Jesus could arrive at a place in His relationship with the Father where He could say, the Father tells me what to say and what to speak.

God has promised us this: Through prayer, the Word, and a huge dose of time, you can learn to hear His voice. If you spend more time in God’s presence, being silent, His Spirit will teach you.

Bonhoeffer said, in his seminal work on fellowship with God and others - Life Together, “Silence before the Word leads to right hearing and thus also to the right speaking of the Word of God at the right time."

Bonhoeffer puts his finger on how we can hear God: Silence ourselves before the Spirit and His Word and listen intentionally with many fewer distractions.

God is not mercurial in His speaking to us. He doesn’t blithely download a word here and there. He is constant. His Word is always at our fingertips. Deliberately be still and listen to the Lord. The Spirit will teach you to hear the voice of God.

We hope you’ve been blessed and encouraged by this devotional. If you would like to dig deeper into Tim Cameron‘s teachings and resources, you can find more details at: www.timcameronprayer.com.