Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God (The IVP Signature Collection)

by Dallas Willard

Generally we are in God’s will whenever we are leading the kind of life he wants for us. And that leaves a lot of room for initiative on our part, which is essential: our individual initiatives are central to his will for us.

Of course, talking to God is an almost universal practice. The words “Talking to God: An Intimate Look at the Way We Pray” covered the front of Newsweek’s issue for January 6, 1992. The main article was devoted to some sociological studies of the practice of prayer undertaken in the United States. “This week,” the article said, “more of us will pray than will go to work, or exercise, or have sexual relations. . . . 78 percent of all Americans pray at least once a week; more than half (57 percent) report praying at least once a day. . . . Even among the 13 percent of Americans who are atheists or agnostics, nearly one in five still prays daily.”

“Why is it,” comedian Lily Tomlin asks, “that when we speak to God we are said to be praying but when God speaks to us we are said to be schizophrenic?”

Frederick B. Meyer writes, “So long as there is some thought of personal advantage, some idea of acquiring the praise and commendation of men, some aim of self-aggrandizement, it will be simply impossible to find out God’s purpose concerning us.”

Closely aligned to wanting to hear God only to know the future, some people want to have God’s distinct instructions so they will not have to be responsible for their actions. But responsibility and initiative are the heart of our relationship with God. We are not robots, and he does not work with robots.

E. Stanley Jones observed, Obviously God must guide us in a way that will develop spontaneity in us. The development of character, rather than direction in this, that, and the other matter, must be the primary purpose of the Father. He will guide us, but he won’t override us. That fact should make us use with caution the method of sitting down with a pencil and a blank sheet of paper to write down the instructions dictated by God for the day. Suppose a parent would dictate to the child minutely everything he is to do during the day. The child would be stunted under that regime. The parent must guide in such a manner, and to the degree, that autonomous character, capable of making right decisions for itself, is produced. God does the same.9

When you surrender initiative, you make prayer meaningless. It lifts your spirits, but does not influence what God is going to do. God has purposes and will accomplish these purposes, but he develops people who do those things. That is one reason it is hard to get people to pray at church and why prayer meetings are often dead. People don’t see that prayer—real, two-way conversation with God—makes any difference. If you interpret the conversation simply as God telling you what to do, you don’t see the importance of talking with and hearing God.

In his book George Mueller of Bristol, A. T. Pierson comments on this verse from the Psalms in a way that both elaborates the present point and will prove highly useful later in this book: Here is a double emphasis upon meekness as a condition of such guidance and teaching. Meekness is a real preference for God’s will. Where this holy habit of mind exists, the whole being becomes so open to impression that, without any outward sign or token, there is an inward recognition and choice of the will of God. God guides, not by a visible sign, but by swaying the judgment. To wait before him, weighing candidly in the scales every consideration for or against a proposed course, and in readiness to see which way the preponderance lies, is a frame of mind and heart in which one is fitted to be guided; and God touches the scales and makes the balance to sway as he will. But our hands must be off the scales, otherwise we need expect no interposition of his in our favor.4

There is a little placard I have seen that reads, “Lord, when we are wrong, make us willing to change, and when we are right, make us easy to live with!” A very wise prayer.

Thomas à Kempis speaks for all the ages when he represents Jesus as saying to him, “A wise lover regards not so much the gift of him who loves, as the love of him who gives. He esteems affection rather than valuables, and sets all gifts below the Beloved. A noble-minded lover rests not in the gift, but in Me above every gift.”

Earth’s crammed with Heaven, and every common bush afire with God; but only he who sees takes off his shoes. Elizabeth Barrett Browning

One remarkable illustration concerns Peter Marshall, the Scot who in the middle of the twentieth century became one of America’s most widely acclaimed ministers. Through his outstanding qualities as a man and a leader, he brought the office of the chaplain of the United States Senate to a new level of prominence. Back in Britain, on one foggy, pitch-black Northumberland night, he was taking a shortcut across the moors in an area where there was a deep, deserted limestone quarry. As he plodded blindly forward, an urgent voice called out, “Peter!” He stopped and answered: “Yes, who is it? What do you want?” But there was no response. Thinking he was mistaken, he took a few more steps. The voice came again, even more urgently, “Peter!” At this he stopped again and, trying to peer into the darkness, stumbled forward and fell to his knees. Putting down his hand to brace himself, he found nothing there. As he felt around in a semicircle he discovered that he was right on the brink of the abandoned quarry. Taking one more step would certainly have killed him.1

Our preexisting ideas and assumptions are what actually determine what we can see, hear or otherwise observe. These general ideas—which so often we hold because they express how we want things to be—determine what stories can mean to us. Our beliefs and opinions cannot, therefore, be changed by stories and miraculous events alone, since they prevent a correct perception of those very stories and events.

G. Campbell Morgan has a few incisive words to say on this point. Having mentioned that when God speaks to us his word comes as a disturbing element into our lives, he continues, You have never heard the voice of God, and you say: “The day of miracles is past. I am never disturbed. I make my own plans and live where I please and do as I like. What do you mean by a disturbing element?” . . . Beloved, you are living still among the fleshpots and garlic of Egypt. You are still in slavery. . . . You know no disturbing voice? God never points out for you a pathway altogether different from the one you had planned? Then, my brother, you are living still in the land of slavery, in the land of darkness.

Perhaps we do not hear the voice because we do not expect to hear it. Then again, perhaps we do not expect it because we know that we fully intend to run our lives on our own and have never seriously considered anything else. The voice of God would therefore be an unwelcome intrusion into our plans. By contrast, we expect great spiritual leaders to hear that voice just because we see their lives wholly given up to doing what God wants.

Frank Laubach tells of the immense change that came over his life at the point when he resolved to do the will of God: As for me, I never lived, I was half dead, I was a rotting tree, until I reached the place where I wholly, with utter honesty, resolved and then re-resolved that I would find God’s will, and I would do that will though every fiber in me said no, and I would win the battle in my thoughts. It was as though some deep artesian well had been struck in my soul. . . . You and I shall soon blow away from our bodies. Money, praise, poverty, opposition, these make no difference, for they will all alike be forgotten in a thousand years, but this spirit which comes to a mind set upon continuous surrender, this spirit is timeless.6

When the great French mathematician and astronomer Pierre Simon de Laplace presented Emperor Napoleon with a copy of his book on celestial mechanics, the emperor asked him where God fit into his system. Laplace indignantly drew himself up and replied, “Sir, I have no need of any such hypothesis!”

The edge of the known universe is now thought to be something like forty-six to forty-seven billion light-years away. Beyond that, even light waves, traveling at the speed of 186,284 miles per second, can never reach us!

The great scientist and Christian Blaise Pascal wrote, When I see the blind and wretched state of man, when I survey the whole universe in its dumbness and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe, without knowing who put him there, what he has come to do, what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost and with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair. I see other people around me, made like myself. I ask them if they are any better informed than I, and they say they are not. Then these lost and wretched creatures look around and find some attractive objects to which they become addicted and attached. For my part I have never been able to form such attachments, and considering how very likely it is that there exists something besides what I can see, I have tried to find out whether God has left any traces of himself.8

This is what the apostle Paul has in mind when he says, in his sermon on Mars Hill in Athens, that God has so arranged our world that we should seek the Lord and—as the Jerusalem Bible nicely translates it—“by feeling [our] way toward him, succeed in finding him. Yet in fact he is not far from any of us, since it is in him that we live, and move, and exist” (Acts 17:27-28). Since God is not far, God hears us when we speak. When he speaks, we can hear him.

Sir James Jean interpreted the result of developments in physics during the first part of the twentieth century as follows: Today there is a wide measure of agreement, which on the side of Physics approaches almost to unanimity, that the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter; we are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter.10

More recently, in his essay “Remarks on the Mind-Body Question,” Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner has pointed to a general recognition among physicists that thought or the mind is primary to physical reality: “It is not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to consciousness.” Princeton physicist John A. Wheeler even goes so far as to hold that subjective and objective realities, consciousness and matter, mutually create each other. Another leading physicist, Jack Sarfatti, remarks that “an idea of the utmost significance for the development of psycho-energetic systems . . . is that the structure of matter may not be independent of consciousness.”11

“A redemptive teaching relationship,” as Henri Nouwen has said, “is bilateral. . . . The teacher has to learn from his student. . . . Teachers and students are fellowmen who together are searching for what is true, meaningful, and valid, and who give each other the chance to play each other’s roles.”16

In contrast to the cultish mentality, consider the immense spiritual healthiness of that good man Charles Haddon Spurgeon: For my part I should loathe to be the pastor of a people who have nothing to say, or who, if they do say anything, might as well be quiet, for the pastor is Lord Paramount, and they are mere laymen and nobodies. I would sooner be the leader of six free men, whose enthusiastic love is my only power over them, than play the director to a score of enslaved nations. What position is nobler than that of a spiritual father who claims no authority and yet is universally esteemed, whose word is given only as tender advice, but is allowed to operate with the force of law? Consulting the wishes of others he finds that they are glad to defer to him. Lovingly firm and graciously gentle, he is the chief of all because he is the servant of all. Does not this need wisdom from above? What can require it more? David when established on the throne said, “[It is the Lord] who subdueth my people under me,” and so may every happy pastor say when he sees so many brethren of differing temperaments all happily willing to be under discipline, and to accept his leadership in the work of the Lord. . . . Brethren, our system will not work without the Spirit of God, and I am glad it will not, for its stoppages and breakages call our attention to the fact of His absence. Our system was never intended to promote the glory of priests and pastors, but it is calculated to educate manly...

We can minister Christ only as we teach what he taught in the manner in which he taught it.

The advice of St. Francis de Sales to his student Philothea gives a proper practical balance between the individual and social dimensions of our life in Christ. Describing as “inspirations” all of “those interior attractions, motions, reproaches and remorses, lights and conceptions which God excites in us,” he directs her as follows: Resolve, then, Philothea, to accept with a ready heart all the inspirations it shall please God to send to you. When they come, receive them as ambassadors sent by the King of Heaven, who desires to enter into a marriage contract with you. Attend calmly to His proposals, think of the love with which you are inspired, and cherish the holy inspiration. Consent to the holy inspiration with an entire, a loving and a permanent consent.18 Then St. Francis wisely directs his friend back into the fellowship of the church, saying, “but before you consent to inspiration in things which are of great importance, or that are out of the ordinary way, always consult your advisor.”

Joyce Huggett passes on similar advice, which she received from her friend Jean Darnall: “If you believe God has told you to do something, ask him to confirm it to you three times: through his word, through circumstances, and through other people who may know nothing of the situation.”

Samuel Shoemaker has written this excellent description of our experience of God in this respect. Something comes into our own energies and capacities and expands them. We are laid hold of by Something greater than ourselves. We can face things, create things, accomplish things, that in our own strength would have been impossible. . . . The Holy Spirit seems to mix and mingle His power with our own, so that what happens is both a heightening of our own powers, and a gift to us from outside. This is as real and definite as attaching an appliance to an electrical outlet, though of course such a mechanical analogy is not altogether satisfactory.7

Moses and Paul, two of the people most responsible for the human authorship of the Bible, were, accordingly, weak with words so that they might have the best chance of clinging constantly to their support in God, who spoke in union with them, and so that they might unerringly connect their hearers with God.

J. B. Phillips said somewhere that, while he was doing his well-known translation of the New Testament, he often felt like an electrician working on the wiring of a house with the power on.

Russ Johnston points out the importance of recurrent thoughts in God’s communication with his children: We would see wonderful results if we would just deal with the thoughts that continue in our minds in a godly manner. But most people don’t. . . . As thoughts come into your mind and continue, ask God, “Do you really want me (or us) to do this?” Most of us just let those thoughts collapse—and God looks for someone else to stand in the gap.8

Rosalind Rinker

Prayer: Conversing with God

Referring to the question, “Were not the miracles and gifts of the Spirit only for the apostolic church?” Andrew Murray replied, Basing my views on scripture, I do not believe that miracles and the other gifts of the Spirit were limited to the time of the primitive Church, nor that their object was to establish the foundation of Christianity and then disappear by God’s withdrawal of them. . . . The entire scriptures declare that these graces will be granted according to the measure of the Spirit and of faith.12

C. H. Spurgeon is right on the mark with his comments on Psalm 103:2 (about not forgetting the Lord’s benefits). Ought we not to look upon our own history as being at least as full of God, as full of His goodness and of His truth, as much a proof of His faithfulness and veracity, as the lives of any of the saints who have gone before? We do our Lord an injustice when we suppose that He wrought all His mighty acts, and showed Himself strong for those in the early time, but doth not perform wonders or lay bare His arm for the saints who are now upon the earth. Let us review our own lives. Surely in these we may discover some happy incidents, refreshing to ourselves and glorifying to our God. Have you had no deliverances? Have you passed through no rivers, supported by the divine presence? Have you walked through no fires unharmed? Have you had no manifestations? Have you had no choice favours? . . . Surely the goodness of God has been the same to us as to the saints of old.14

There are dangers to encouraging people to hear from God. Of course there are. The adventure can get disastrously out of hand. We know that people do go off the deep end, and this problem must be addressed. Yet after gravely warning that death and disaster may also come from going off the shallow end, what must be done pastorally is to lead people into an understanding of the voice of God and how it works in their lives.

Notice that Jesus never had a vision, but Paul had visions.

I have found much help in the words of E. Stanley Jones, who firmly believed in and practiced interaction with God’s voice throughout his life: God cannot guide you in any way that is not Christ-like. Jesus was supreme sanity. There was nothing psychopathic about Him. He went off into no visions, no dreams. He got His guidance through prayer as you and I do. That is, He got His guidance when in control of His faculties, and not when out of control as in dreams. I do not say that God may not guide through a vision or dream; but if He does, it will be very seldom, and it will be because He cannot get hold of our normal processes to guide them. For God is found most clearly and beneficially in the normal rather than in the abnormal. And Jesus is the Normal, for He is the Norm.15

In general, knowledge tends to be destructive when held by anything less than a mature character thoroughly permeated by love and humility.

Bob Mumford, discussing the spectacular forms of communication from God, remarks that signs are given to us, because God meets us on the level where we operate. . . . In guidance, when God shows us a sign, it doesn’t mean we’ve received the final answer. A sign means we’re on the way. On the highway we may pass a sign saying, “New York: 100 miles.” The sign doesn’t mean we’ve reached New York, but it tells us we’re on the right road.16 But on the other hand, he continues, God wants to bring us beyond the point where we need signs to discern His guiding hand. Satan cannot counterfeit the peace of God or the love of God dwelling in us. When Christ’s abiding presence becomes our guide, then guidance becomes an almost unconscious response to the gentle moving of His Holy Spirit within us.

Most of what we think we see as the struggle of faith is really the struggle to act as if we had faith when in fact we do not.

The emperor Napoleon Bonaparte was about to use great force to subdue a certain population when a wise lieutenant, one of his aides, said to him, “Monsignor, one cannot sit upon bayonets.” This man understood that the use of brute force could not lead to a settled political rule.

Hannah Hurnard has so beautifully described it, is the role of the intercessor: An intercessor means one who is in such vital contact with God and with his fellow men that he is like a live wire closing the gap between the saving power of God and the sinful men who have been cut off from that power. An intercessor is the contacting link between the source of power (the life of the Lord Jesus Christ) and the objects needing that power and life.1

Until now we have been dealing with the word of God as it comes to, on and through us. But in the progress of God’s redemptive work, communication advances into communion, and communion into union. When the progression is complete we can truly say, “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20) and “For to me, living is Christ” (Phil 1:21). Communication often occurs over a certain distance, even amid possible opposition. We can still communicate with those with whom we are at war. God communicates with us even while we are his enemies, dead in our sins. When communication between two people rises to the level of communion, there is a distinctness but also a profound sharing of the thoughts, feelings and objectives that make up our lives. Each recognizes the thought or feeling as his or hers, while knowing with joy that the other is feeling or thinking in the same way. When communion advances into union, however, the sense of “mine” and “thine” may often be absent. There is only “ours” and, while “mine” does mean mine, it no longer thereby also means “not thine.” This condition of union is realized in a marriage where the two partners have indeed become one. For this reason marriage can serve as a picture of the relation between Christ and his church, and between the soul and God. It is this union beyond communion that Paul speaks of when he says the redeemed have the mind of Christ (1 Cor 2:16) as well as when he exhorts us to have the mind of C...

James S. Stewart’s profound book A Man in Christ deals with this tendency in interpreting Paul and forcefully corrects it: Beyond the reproduction in the believer’s spiritual life of his Lord’s death and burial lies the glorious fact of union with Christ in His resurrection. “Like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). Everything that Paul associates with salvation—joy, and peace, and power, and progress, and moral victory—is gathered up in the one word he uses so constantly, “life.” Only those who through Christ have entered into a vital relationship to God are really “alive.” . . . But what Paul now saw with piercing clearness was that this life into possession of which souls entered by conversion was nothing else than the life of Christ Himself. He shared His very being with them.3

William Law comments, “Therefore the Scriptures should only be read in an attitude of prayer, trusting to the inward working of the Holy Spirit to make their truths a living reality within us.”5

Madame Guyon in her little book Short and Very Easy Way of Prayer, first published in 1688 in Lyons, France. This book is still available today, republished with some modifications under the title Experiencing the Depths of Jesus Christ.

The doctrine of the inner light is not sufficiently taught. To the individual believer, who is, by the very fact of relationship to Christ, indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God, there is granted the direct impression of the Spirit of God on the Spirit of man, imparting the knowledge of his will in matters of the smallest and greatest importance. This has to be sought and waited for. G. Campbell Morgan, God’s Perfect Will

once saw on television a story about a man named Charlie Frank and his elephant Neeta. Frank raised Neeta from birth and trained her as a circus performer. On retirement he gave her to the San Diego Zoo. They had not seen each other for fifteen years at the point when the program filmed their reunion. Frank called to Neeta across a distance of about a hundred yards. She came to him immediately and performed her old routines on command. Her past experience gave her the power to recognize his voice. In a similar way, we human beings learn from experience alone how to recognize the color red, with its various shades and characteristics, and to distinguish it from blue or yellow. A musician learns by experience to distinguish a minor key from a major one simply by hearing a melody.

God’s impressions within and his word without are always corroborated by his providence around, and we should quietly wait until those three focus into one point. . . . If you do not know what you ought to do, stand still until you do. And when the time comes for action, circumstances, like glowworms, will sparkle along your path; and you will become so sure that you are right, when God’s three witnesses concur, that you could not be surer though an angel beckoned you on.2 Many discussions about hearing God’s voice speak of three points of reference, also called “three lights,” that we can consult in determining what God wants us to do.3 These are • circumstances • impressions of the Spirit • passages from the Bible When these three things point in the same direction, it is suggested, we may be sure the direction in which they point is the one God intends for us.