Say What? Listening For God’s Voice

As I reflect on things I learned about my faith growing up, listening to God seemed like one of those things only prophets, priests, and saints did. I always envied the disciples and people who got to sit down with Jesus and actually hear him speak. What would it be like to actually hear his voice? To have a sit-down face-to-face conversation with him? But what if I could hear him speak to me now, all these millennia later? What would he say to me? I was taught to pray, to talk with God and share my needs with him and the needs of others. But I didn’t learn about listening to God. And yet, we are told we need to listen to God’s voice:

“My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.” John 10:27, NLT

“Pay close attention to what you hear. The closer you listen, the more understanding you will be given—and you will receive even more. To those who listen to my teaching, more understanding will be given. But for those who are not listening, even what little understanding they have will be taken away from them.” Mark 4:24-25, NLT

God wants us to be listening to him. In fact, we need to be listening in order to gain understanding of what we are learning from Scripture and in our lives. Listening is more than just hearing sound waves in the air. You’ve probably heard the expression, “in one ear and out the other.” That’s an example of hearing but not listening.

Listening, the way Jesus is talking about in the above parable, means pondering, meditating, a posture of being open to God and allowing him to speak into my life and situation. It means expecting God to say something to me! Did you realize that you can expect God to say something? I’m on the journey of learning to listen to God, and it’s been so encouraging!

Listening starts with creating space to hear. In a world where we regularly see people talking to each other with their eyes on their phones, TV screen, computer, or anything else, we need to realize that this is not really listening. We may be hearing what the other person is saying but we’re not giving them our full attention. The kind of listening we want to practice is active listening. It requires setting aside distractions and turning our bodies physically (if we can) toward the person, giving them our full attention. That’s not just good advice for our relationship with God but with any relationship. 

Does that seem challenging? Well, maybe think of it as a muscle that needs to be exercised – our attention muscle. Creating space to listen to God means putting aside distractions so we can give him our full attention. We may need to start by going into a quiet space, leaving our phone behind or turning off all notifications. It means practicing being quiet and giving God our attention. 

You may find when you tune out the outside world the distractions are not only around you but also within you! Random thoughts pop in your head, things you need to do, the TV show you watched the day before, the lyrics of a song. It’s very common to discover that when you start listening to God there’s a whole lot of internal noise that gets in the way. Persevere! Remember, our attention muscle needs to be exercised and it won’t happen in just one day or even one week. 

Here are some tips on how to start:

Start small – practice listening for one or two minutes a day. Work your way up to five minutes, then ten minutes. If you try to start out at 20-30 minutes, it will get discouraging pretty fast. We need to give ourselves a reasonable path forward. I’m not a runner but I’ve seen the training tips – you don’t start out by doing a marathon or even a half marathon. You start by alternating walking and running. You gradually train your body to run more than you walk. You condition yourself so you can, one day, do the marathon. That’s the same principle here. Anything worthwhile always starts with the first steps!

Get help from those who’ve done it – We have a rich history of brothers and sisters in Christ who have gone before us and shared their experiences in listening to God. You may want to read up on some historical heroes of the faith, like Benedict and Ignatius, who made listening to God a practice. Another resource is people in your own community of faith who make listening to God a practice and you see the evidence of it in their lives. 

Listening practices:

Lectio Divina – This is one of my personal favorite ways to listen to God through his word. The practice is fairly simple. It works best with a Psalm or short passage of scripture. 

1. 1st reading: Read the passage slowly and just notice if any words or phrases stand out to you. Take 30-60 seconds (to start with) and reflect on what you noticed.
2. 2nd reading: Ask God, “what do you want to show me?” and read the passage again, slowly. Take 30-60 seconds to reflect on what stood out to you.
3. 3rd reading: Ask God, “what do you want to say to me?” and read slowly. Take longer, if necessary, to reflect on what came to you during that reading. 

With this type of reading, writing down what stands out to you can be very helpful. While we want to expect God to speak to us, we also want to release any expectations of what he will say. He will likely surprise you with what he wants to say. I have also found that God often points out things later on, throughout the day or even later in the week, that relate to this time of listening. There are also times I don’t get anything particularly profound but just a deeper sense that God is with me and cares for me. 

Contemplative prayer: this is the practice of listening to God in silence. This is another great practice to start exercising your “attention” muscles. In this practice you would use a short phrase (could be from your Lectio Divina exercise) or a name of God (Jesus, Good Shepherd, Father, Holy Spirit, etc…) as a way of focusing on God. You are not saying anything to God or trying to get an answer for anything. You are simply being present to God and becoming aware that he is present to you. There are some free apps, like the Centering Prayer app, that can help you set a time to practice each day. Here is an article if you would like to know more about this practice (https://conversatio.org/being-with-god-the-practice-of-contemplative-prayer/)

Ignatian Prayer: Ignatius was a church leader and theologian in the 15th century. He developed a way of Christian life and prayer that continues today. You can use this link to try an 8-week prayer routine:

This is just a short look at what it means to listen to God. There are many questions that may be stirred up – how do I know that it’s really God is who I’m hearing? How do I discern what it means? I will be exploring these topics and more in the upcoming articles. I hope, though, that you are now curious to try listening to God, creating more space to pay attention to what he may want to say to you.