Beginning the Year Knowing How to Hear God Whispers: Hearing His Voice in the Noise

God whispers His love into the most unexpected moments. Today, my friend Asheritah Ciuciu shares a story that will stir your heart to lean in and listen. As a Romanian missionary kid, Asheritah’s life is a testimony of God’s gentle guidance. May her words inspire you to notice His whispers in your own life. It is my absolute delight to welcome Asheritah to the farm’s table today…

Guest Post by Asheritah Ciuciu

“Go, talk to the lady at the counter.”

The whisper took my mom aback. She looked around the airport, taking in the empty chairs as tourists rushed out the revolving doors to glimpse the Acropolis and taste baklava.

She wouldn’t get to experience Athens because the lady at the counter was filling out her repatriation forms that very moment, sending her back to Romania. The secret police would be waiting at the gate to arrest her and sentence her to a life in prison—all because she followed Jesus and invited others to follow Him too.

“Tell her your story,” the whisper repeated. “I will give you the words.”

She rubbed her swollen belly, worry filling her heart. She would never see her baby girl if they sent her back; the communist prison guards would place her child in an orphanage. She’d never again see her husband and toddler son, hiding at that very moment, hoping she would make a way for their escape to Athens. She’d probably die in the frozen trenches of the Danube River, forced to work until her body gave out.

“Go, talk to her,” the whisper insisted. “Tell her your story.”

With a racing heart and shallow breaths, my mother obeyed the whisper.

“I don’t even speak Greek,” she whispered, hauling herself to her swollen feet.

“Tell her your story,” the whisper repeated. “I will give you the words.”

She stepped up to the counter.

Stories like this seem ripped from the pages of a novel, but all around the world, God’s Spirit still moves His people in ways that seem fantastical to our twenty-first-century sensibilities.

“The problem is not that God doesn’t speak to us. More likely, the problem is that we don’t stop to listen to His voice.“

Yet our own lives seem oddly bereft of such miraculous encounters with the Lord. Or are they?

The problem is not that God doesn’t speak to us. More likely, the problem is that we don’t stop to listen to His voice.

If you’ve ever felt the tension of wanting to talk to God and hear His voice but not being able to hear yourself think (let alone hear God speak!), please know that you’re not alone.

There are valid reasons we struggle to pray, but there’s one compelling reason to pray anyway: Jesus stands ready to help us.

My prayer life radically changed the moment I realized that Jesus is actually praying for me.

Hebrews 7:25 reads: “Therefore, he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, since he always lives to intercede for them” (CSB).

“If you could overhear Jesus praying for you in the other room, what would He be praying for you?“

This intercession isn’t limited to salvation; it continues through Jesus’ ministry of prayer by His Spirit: “And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because he intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (Romans 8:27, CSB).

Pause to ponder that for a moment: If you could overhear Jesus praying for you in the other room, what would He be praying for you?

As we learn to sit with Jesus as He prays for us through His Spirit, we’ll begin to hear His still, small voice in the quiet. And the more often we hear His voice in the quiet, the more we learn to recognize His voice in the noise.

Just as I can pick up the timbre of my husband’s laugh or storytelling across a crowded room, we’ll learn to discern the whisper of our Good Shepherd in the noisiness of daily life.

Returning to the Athens airport . . .

My mother trusted the whisper even though she didn’t trust the lady at the counter.

She showed the woman a black-and-white photo of the husband and child she’d left behind, and in her broken English and French pieced together why she was fleeing communist Romania. A life of forced labor awaited her simply because she followed Jesus and invited others to follow Him too.

And that December day in 1987, a miracle happened in a small cubicle in the Athens airport. The hard heart of this airline employee softened as she leaned in. “Tell me more,” she said.

Twenty-one years later, my mother took me back to Athens to meet that same woman—Fanny—whose name I carry as my middle name. We walked the halls of the crisis pregnancy center that housed my mother in the weeks leading up to her labor, and we sat in the sacred space where a scared twenty-one-year-old pregnant girl listened to a still, small voice.

“The One who hears the cries of a lonely girl far from home. The One who softens the heart of a tired, overworked airline employee. The One who whispers into the chaos of an international airport to save a life. This is our God. “

The three of us sat around Fanny’s dining room table, enjoying an authentic Greek meal.

“I wasn’t even supposed to be there,” Fanny told me as she dished out homemade eggplant papoutsakia. “My shift had ended an hour before, so imagine how annoyed I was when my supervisor gave me extra paperwork to extradite this pregnant foreigner to her homeland.”

“But God kept you there,” my mom said, filling up the water glasses. “For me. For us.”

Fanny laughed as she put her arm around my mother. “No one else in that airport knew the people I knew and could call in the favors that I called. And that—” she said, locking eyes with me, “is how your mother came to live here for a year. That is how you were born here.”

Sitting at that table with Fanny and my mother, I felt overwhelmed by the power and tender love of God.

The One who hears the cries of a lonely girl far from home. The One who softens the heart of a tired, overworked airline employee. The One who whispers into the chaos of an international airport to save a life.

This is our God.

The One who delights in you and longs for you to hear His tender whispers guiding you in the way you should go.

In Delighting in Jesus, Bible teacher Asheritah Ciuciu invites you to lift your gaze from your to-do list and get to know the One who spun the stars and knows you by name. You’re invited to rediscover joy and hear God’s gentle whispers in the midst of life’s noise. Through simple yet profound rhythms, this book offers a path back to peace and delight in Him.

Discover the theological foundation for how we were Created for Delight. You’ll see that throughout Scripture, joy originates from God, pulses at the heart of the gospel, and is promised to us as fruit from God’s Spirit.

Want to experience this joy in community? Join the free Delighting in Jesus Online Book Club and connect with women seeking to hear God’s voice together. Sign up today at https://www.delightinginjesus.com/. 

{Our humble thanks to Moody Publishers for their partnership in today’s devotional.}