How to Hear God: A Simple Guide for Normal People

by Pete Greig

This is a simple book for normal people about how to plug in and hear the voice of God more clearly amid the clatter and clamor of daily life. It is, in other words, a simple guide to one of the most astounding yet confusing things you will ever learn to do. Astounding because, well, what could be more amazing? With four words—"Let there be light”—(just two in Hebrew) God created more than one hundred billion galaxies (Gen. 1:3). “The LORD merely spoke, and the heavens were created. He breathed the word, and all the stars were born” (Ps. 33:6 NLT). What on earth might happen if he were to speak a few words to me? But it’s confusing too because God does not for the most part speak audibly, the way we speak, and this means that we can easily misunderstand, misinterpret, or miss out altogether on what he is saying. The problem is generally not that God isn’t communicating, and neither is it normally that we lack the capacity to hear. Rather, like me on that train, it’s that we easily get disconnected, distracted, and distanced from the intimate and immediate connection we were created to enjoy. It’s a disconnection that comes, as the Anglican Service of Communion puts it, “through negligence, through weakness, and through our own deliberate fault.”