How to Hear God: A Simple Guide for Normal People

by Pete Greig

the Emmaus road story is also, preeminently, a model of prayer. Somehow these few verses distill more insight into how God speaks, and how we are to hear him speak, than any other passage, anywhere else in the Gospels. In fewer than twenty verses, the Lord communicates in at least five different ways: conversationally “as they talked and discussed these things with each other”; exegetically when he explained “all the Scriptures concerning himself”; sacra-mentally when he “took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them”; prophetically when “their eyes were opened”; and inwardly when he spoke directly to their hearts, which were “burning . . . while he talked.”

The simple fact of the matter is that for every person who encounters Christ dramatically on the Damascus road with blinding lights and a booming voice, hundreds more meet him slowly and quietly, incognito on the Emmaus road, through friendship, Scripture, and conversation.

Theologically, I had absorbed some of the prejudices of dispensationalism, although I would never have known what that term meant. This is the idea that we should no longer expect God to speak and act miraculously today in the ways he once did in the Bible because that sort of thing died the day the ink dried on the New Testament. These days, the argument goes, we have God’s Word in the Bible, which is far more reliable than all that other whacko stuff. One of the many problems with this view is that it disregards the fact that people can, and do, misunderstand and misapply the Bible just as much as any other means of divine communication. It also ignores that the Bible itself teaches that God speaks outside the Bible!15 Dispensationalism only really makes sense in the absence of miracles, which leads me to the third problem I had with hearing from God . .

Many people struggle to hear God because they have been taught to listen for his voice in ways that are difficult or even impossible for them to process.

disproportionate amount of the material on listening to God has been written by introverts (representing approximately 35 percent of the population), who understandably advocate their own preference for quietness, stillness, and solitude. Countless extroverts struggle to hear God in such introverted ways and conclude that they are simply inherently bad at prayer. How desperately they need to know that it’s equally possible, and no less spiritual, to discern the voice of God in public spaces, with other people, and through processes of external interaction. Yes, the Bible says, “Be still, and know that I am God” (Ps. 46:10), but it also says, “Let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation’ (Ps. 95:1)!

“In the spiritual life God chooses to try our patience first of all by His slowness,” wrote Frederick Faber almost two hundred years ago.

First, it shows that the resurrected Jesus continues to look to the Bible for authority. A brand-new world may have been inaugurated by his death and resurrection, but the Bible is still the means by which Jesus knows what he knows.

“Oh, give me that book!” cried John Wesley. “At any price give me the book of God! . . . Let me be homo unius libri [a man of a single book].”

We talk a great deal today about “encountering” the Lord. Books, conferences, and organizations use this term a lot. We design worship events and ministry times explicitly to create space for encounters with God. And the Emmaus road story is perhaps the ultimate example of just the kind of life-changing encounter to which we aspire. And yet it is marked less by the feelings and phenomena we tend to associate with such moments than it is by a lengthy Bible study. Let me say that again. This archetypal encounter with the resurrected

Lord is signaled not by a dramatic experience, nor by an overpowering emotion, but rather “merely” by an extensive exposition of Scripture.

Open the door and let the lion out; he will take care of himself. . . . He no sooner goes forth in his strength than his assailants flee. The way to meet infidelity is to spread the Bible. The answer to every objection against the Bible is the Bible. —Charles Spurgeon

“We revere the Bible, but don’t read it,” observed famous pollster George Gallup Jr. dryly. “It is the bestselling, least-read book in America.”

There are two particular skills that every single Christian needs to develop, therefore, in order to hear God in and through holy Scripture. First, we must learn to read the Bible with our heads, in order to understand what is actually, objectively, being said. And second, we must learn to read it with our hearts, in order to experience God’s voice through its pages. By carefully studying the Bible, we come to understand what its writers were originally saying. And by prayerfully exploring it, we learn to discern what the Holy Spirit is saying to us now. It’s important to do both. If I understand what the Bible means but never hear what it says to me personally, I have information without revelation. But conversely, if I disregard its original context and ignore the bits I don’t like or don’t understand, I will be in grave danger of abusing God’s Word by confusing it with my own feelings, preferences, and prejudices.

Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher to the papal household, puts it beautifully like this: If the written word of the Bible could be changed into a spoken word and become one single voice, this voice, more powerful than the roaring of the sea would cry out: “the Father loves you!” (John 16:27). Everything that God does and says in the Bible is love, even God’s anger is nothing but love. God “is” love!25

Augustine was born in the ancient North African city of Thagaste, in modern-day Algeria. There he lived until the age of seventeen when he traveled to Carthage to study rhetoric. In that great metropolis he immersed himself enthusiastically in “a hissing cauldron of lust.”27 As T. S. Eliot put it in his poem The Waste Land, To Carthage then I came Burning burning burning burning28

Confronted by the call of Christ, he famously prayed, “Give me chastity and self-control, but not yet.”29

Augustine’s training in rhetoric, his great learning, and his newfound passion for the gospel combined to make him an indomitable evangelist: “Preach wherever you can,” he said, “to whom you can, and as you can.”

Scripture is, in some sense, the music of God, which we hear; in another sense, it is the instrument of God, which we play. —Origen of Alexandria (185–254)

“When you meditate,” said Archbishop François Fénelon, “imagine that Jesus Christ in person is about to talk to you about the most important thing in the world. Give him your complete attention.”

Richard Foster, who has spent much of his life researching such things, concludes, “The devotional masters of nearly all persuasions counsel us that we can descend with the mind into the heart most easily through the imagination.”

A. W. Tozer warned starkly of the dangers of ignoring our imaginations when it comes to the Bible, saying, “The weakness of the Pharisee in days of old was his lack of imagination, or what amounted to the same thing, his refusal to let it enter the field of religion. He saw the text with its carefully guarded theological definition and he saw nothing beyond.”16 Perhaps we might say that he saw the Scriptures as a picture frame containing God’s Word but not as a window frame opening his imagination to something more.

There’s an old joke about a Franciscan, a Dominican, and a Jesuit who were praying, when the lights went out. The Franciscan said, “Oh, this is a wonderful opportunity to live more simply.” The Dominican launched into a sermon about the significance of darkness and light. And the Jesuit went off to change the fuse.

Anima Christi (A Prayer from the Start of the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises) Soul of Christ, sanctify me. Body of Christ, save me. Blood of Christ, inebriate me. Water from the side of Christ, wash me. Passion of Christ, strengthen me. O Good Jesus, hear me. Within your wounds hide me. Permit me not to be separated from you. From the wicked foe, defend me. At the hour of my death, call me and bid me come to you That with your saints I may praise you For ever and ever. Amen.

So the primary focus of prophecy is others, and the primary purpose of prophecy is their strengthening, encouraging, comfort, and edification.

prophecies with discernment and discretion because they are invariably only partially right, or at least limited in their insight (1 Cor. 13:9). There are three keys to doing this well: weigh it, wait on it, and walk in it.

This is important. If we are ever to feel fully safe and truly loved by the Lord of all the earth, we must eventually—like Elijah on Horeb and that couple on the Emmaus road—learn to listen for his voice in the anticlimax of life’s nonevents.

There is a well-documented psychological condition known as inattentional blindness, in which our brains can fail to perceive a thing right in front of us when it flat-out contradicts our prior assumptions and expectations.

Fascinating concept for the spiritual life

“There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful,” he said, “than that of a continual conversation with God.”

The friend of silence draws near to God. —John Climacus (579–649)

Solitude is the place of the great struggle and the great encounter—the struggle against the compulsions of the false self, and the encounter with the loving God who offers himself as the substance of the new self. —Henri Nouwen

In his classic work The Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster advises us to make the most of all the “little solitudes” that punctuate our days.11 It’s surprising how many of these selah moments there actually are—early morning or late at night, driving in the car or sitting alone on a crowded train, in the bathroom or walking between meetings—and how carelessly and comprehensively we fill these moments with digital distraction.

A twenty-four-hour silent retreat may seem intimidating, especially if you’re an extrovert, but it won’t be long before your little daily solitudes are not enough and you long for more! Silent retreats require planning (especially if you’re going to attempt one at home). Generally, it’s best to get away to a place where you can be undisturbed. Personally, I find it helpful to bookend my retreats with some direction at the start in the form of a conversation to set expectations, with a friend or spiritual guide, and a debrief at the end. During my retreat I tend to plan a very light structure incorporating six elements: exercise, sleep, meals, reading, journaling, and prayer. If I am in a monastic setting, I will attend some (but probably not all) of the seven daily offices, and if mealtimes are not silent (as they often are), I will make arrangements to take my meals in my room. In planning my schedule, I am careful to go easy on myself. My personal tendency is to place unrealistic expectations on myself and to become overly idealistic about the potential of my retreat. The fact is that I am not going to read more than one book, and I might not even read more than one chapter. And it’s okay to take a siesta—even an involuntary one while trying to pray. And I certainly don’t need to return from retreat with any great new epiphany.

If we believe the Bible we must accept the fact that, in the old days, God and his angels came to men in their sleep and made themselves known in dreams. —Abraham Lincoln

In the Bible, dreams and visions are—for the most part—viewed interchangeably: visions being “waking dreams” and dreams being “visions of the night.”

The primary mark of the outpouring of the Spirit on all flesh in these last days, according to Joel, cited by Peter, is not speaking in tongues, shaking, or falling to the ground. It is an increase in dreams and visions. If you are filled with the Spirit, you should therefore expect God to speak to you in this way.

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Paranormal america sounds like an interesting book

In the rhyme sometimes attributed to nineteenth-century cardinal John Henry Newman, “I sought to hear the voice of God And climbed the topmost steeple, But God declared: Go down again—I dwell among the people.”