Whisper: How to Hear the Voice of God

by Mark Batterson

Reading is taking the first bite. Unfortunately, that’s where most people stop. The second step, meditation, is chewing on words and phrases. Instead of dissecting the Word, we let the Word dissect us. The third step, prayer, is savoring the Word. When was the last time you read the Bible for pure enjoyment? It’s prayer that turns discipline into desire; “have to” becomes “get to.” And the fourth step, contemplation, is digesting the Word and absorbing its nutrients. That’s how the Word gets

from our head into our heart.

“I wonder what would happen,” said Peter Marshall, “if we all agreed to read one of the Gospels, until we came to a place that told us to do something, then went out to do it, and only after we had done it…began reading again?”36 I’ll tell you exactly what would happen: God’s kingdom would come and His will would be done! That’s what happens when hearers of the Word become doers of it.

Sure, spiritual disciplines usually start out as disciplines. But sooner or later those disciplines turn into desires if you delight yourself in the Lord.

Tell me how much you enjoy God, and I’ll tell you how spiritually mature you are. The last thing God wants is for His Word to feel like a chore.

But God also calls us to do things that are outside our skill sets, requiring

tremendous dependence upon His help.

Life is too short not to love what you do, so do what you love.

The apostle Paul exhorted us to use our God-given gifts in the pursuit of God-ordained desires. And he identified three traits that should define us as Christ followers: generous, diligent, and cheerful. No matter what you do, these three adjectives ought to apply.

The word generously comes from the Greek word haplotes.23 It’s going above and beyond the call of duty. It’s the extra mile. The word cheerfully comes from hilarotes,24 which

means whistling while we work. It’s an A-game attitude. And the word diligently comes from the Greek word spoude.25 It’s having an eye for excellence, attention to detail. It’s showing care and conscientiousness in everything we do. It hints at continual improvement. But there is a nuance that is easily overlooked. Diligence means delighting i...

Professor Simon Baron-Cohen of the Autism Research Centre at the University of Cambridge has identified 412 emotions with corresponding facial expressions.31

An idol is anything you desire more than God, and that includes God-given dreams and God-ordained callings.

Not many people sell their souls to the devil, but many of us sell our souls to the culture. Instead of defining success for ourselves, we let the culture define it for us. Instead of daring to be different, we conform to the pattern of this world. Why? We let our culture have the loudest voice.

Maybe it’s time to take inventory. What do you want God to do for you? You owe it to Him to answer that question. Free the Fool

Jesus came to set captives free.49 In other words He came to free the fool. And not just free the fool but use fools like you and me to shame the wise.50

that we don’t interpret Scripture via signs; we interpret signs via Scripture.

After all, God writes the rules. But the words that close Mark’s gospel set precedent: “signs following.”12

Moses had to extend his staff first. The priests had to step into the river first. Only then did God part the waters. Faith is taking the first step before God reveals the second step.

nothing closes a door faster than failure. Actually, it slams the door shut. And sometimes our fingers are still in the doorjamb.

Discerning the will of God is about so much more than doing His will. Discerning His will is about knowing His heart, and that happens only when you get close enough to hear Him whisper.

And I can’t think of a better description of living a Spirit-led life—it’s a Wild Goose chase. We have no idea where we’re going much of the time, but as long as we keep in step with the Spirit, we’ll get where God wants us to go.

now and

The will of God is not drudgery. Remember, if you are delighting yourself in the Lord, then God will give you the desires of your heart. Like a game of hot and cold, those desires will get hotter and hotter the closer you get to God’s good, pleasing, and perfect will.

Surround yourself with people who bring out the best in you. Surround yourself with people who have permission to speak the truth in love. Simply put, seek wise counsel.16 This test will save you some trials and get you out of others. And because of our infinite

ability to deceive ourselves, it’s an important check and balance.

We don’t like closed doors when they slam in our faces, and we often don’t understand them. But closed doors are expressions of God’s prevenient grace.

Sometimes closed doors come in the form of failure. Sometimes closed doors are checks in the Spirit that keep us from walking through the doors in the first place. Either way, God sometimes shows the way by getting in the way.

A check in the spirit is difficult to define, difficult to discern. It’s a feeling of uneasiness you can’t ignore. A sixth sense that something isn’t quite right. A lack of peace in your spirit. A check in the spirit is God’s red light, and if you don’t obey the sign, you might be headed for trouble.

God closes doors to protect us. God closes doors to redirect us. God closes doors to keep us from

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What we perceive as detours and delays are often God’s ways of setting up divine appointments. And they often start out as closed doors.

We often think that when God closes a door, that is His final answer. We put a period where God puts a comma. We think it’s a no, but it’s really a not yet.

But sometimes the obstacle is the way! God gets in the way to show us the way.

If Balaam’s donkey teaches us anything, it’s this: God can use anything to accomplish His purposes, and He can do it anywhere, anytime, anyhow. And He particularly likes using foolish things to confound the wise and weak things to confound the strong.31 In other words we all qualify!

How do you read the Bible? Do you read it like a history book? Or do you read it like it’s living and active?

Do you read it as if God has finished doing what He did? Or do you believe that God wants to do it again, and again, and again?

if we do what they did in the Bible, God will do what He did. Why? Because He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.35 And I’ll take it one step further: we’ll do “even greater things.”36

When Solomon woke up, he asked for a discerning heart, which literally means “a hearing heart.”9 Above all else, Solomon wanted to hear the voice of God. That gesture was the genesis of Solomon’s becoming the wisest man on earth.

If we believe that God is the One who designed the human mind, what would lead us to believe that He wouldn’t speak to us through all its component parts? It could even be argued that every feature unique to the human mind is a facet of the image of God. Sometimes He speaks the language of desires by employing the amygdalae. Sometimes He uses the voice of logic, when logic will get us where He wants us to go. God certainly speaks through the five senses, which link to the parietal lobe. And He speaks through memories of the past and dreams of the future.

I subscribe to the school of thought that we steward the brain by learning as much as we can about as much as we can.

Every thought that fires across our eighty-six billion neurons is a tribute to the God who knit us together in our mothers’ wombs.

If you’re a doctor or lawyer or teacher, you didn’t go to med school, law school, or grad school for just you. You went for every patient you’d treat, every client you’d represent, or every student you’d teach.

Just because we have access to the sacred text of Scripture, that doesn’t mean we should expect fewer miracles. Scripture ought to fuel our faith for more. If God can use a double vision to set up a divine appointment between an Italian soldier and a Jewish apostle, why wouldn’t He do the same for us?

If you stay humble and stay hungry, there is nothing God cannot do in you or through you. In fact, the humbler you are, the bigger the dream God can entrust to you, because He knows that He’ll get the glory.

When you use your personality as an excuse, you no longer have a personality; your personality has you.

But if God is sovereign, then we can’t be too young, too old, too timid, or too bad. God cut Jeremiah off: “Do not say, ‘I am too young.’ ”16

You tell me your excuse, and I’ll tell you where God wants to use you. That’s how He puts His grace and His glory on display.

It’s only when we confess our sins to each other that we realize others are also struggling with pride or lust or anger.

Confession gives the other person the opportunity to encourage us, exhort us, and console us.