Blog
How to Listen to God
“God doesn’t talk to me,” she said with held-back tears, abject sorrow emanating from her. “And the one time I thought He was…this is what I get.” How to help her? Is a hug really going to solve her deep longing to hear from her God during this traumatic time of her life? Saying “I’ll be praying for you” just sounds hollow. Giving her an object lesson about the sun being just behind the clouds and not gone seemed to spark hope but didn’t cut the mustard on real answers. Aside from the obvious, what resource could help us know if, when, and how we can hear from God? Then, while getting books ready to be labelled for The Study Room, I came across Charles Stanley’s How to Listen to God. As a comprehensive yet concise book on this topic, it is a perfect start to anyone wanting to know if, when, and how they can hear God. The purposes, the approaches, and the hinderances to listening to and hearing from God are all explored, along with many other facets you’ll just have to borrow the book to read for yourself. Let’s look at a few highlights though.
The Purposes
When we first start hearing from God it may feel more like guilt; however, He has a plan for that feeling: salvation. According to Stanley, “[w]hen God speaks to us, His first goal is that we may comprehend the truth” (p. 19). Truth is, at birth we are all sinners. Who hasn’t told a lie? Or stolen something, even just one grape to…ummm…sample, of course? Or used God’s name in vain? Before God can really speak to us, commune with us, this sin needs to be out of the way so we can be given the Holy Spirit. More on Him soon; but first Jesus.
Romans 6: 23 says, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” This verse means that something has to die for our sin to be dealt with. Our physical death is just the first part and not really the part that deals with our sins. It is the second death that does that. That second death is spiritual separation from God, suffering for all times for what one has done during his or her lifetime. But God really, really, really doesn’t want us to choose that path! He sent Himself in human form as Jesus so He could die for our sins. When Jesus died on that cross 2000 years ago, He took the punishment of our sins on Himself. But it didn’t end there. If it did, what would have been the point?! After He died, Jesus conquered death by rising again; He beat death so we can beat death through Him. How does this all work? It’s so simple, it almost feels too easy.
Romans 10:9-10 says, “That if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.” When we believe and confess, our sins are taken away. We may still die that physical death, but we no longer need to worry about suffering for all eternity for our sin. If you aren’t sure about what was written above, reach out to us. We are more than happy to answer your questions and we have books that can explain it way better. However, if this good news speaks to you right now, then pray to God. Believe in Jesus and ask Him to forgive you for your sins that are leading to those feelings of guilt. And please let us know if you make a decision to follow Jesus. We have resources we can give and books to help those new to faith in Jesus. Furthermore, one of the most wonderful parts of being a believer in Jesus is that we get the Holy Spirit, and now God can really start talking to us. With the Holy Spirit we can start to hear and understand truths aside from salvation.
“[A]ll believers have within them the Holy Spirit who perfectly knows the mind of God and who receives and communicates to our spirit the truth God wants us to hear. Although we were born with a bent away from God, the moment we received Christ as our Savior, the Holy Spirit came in to teach us the truth of who God is” (p. 20). We hear from God by His Spirit in us. A very cool but different thought! This Holy Spirit, however, needs us to play an active roll. Stanley calls it being an aggressive listener, just like the Bereans of Acts 17. They investigated Scripture. Like them, “we are to listen and hear the Word of God with fervent focus. We are not to sit idly and allow the Word of God to stay simply on the surface level” (p. 23). As students of the Bible and with the help of the Holy Spirit, we are now ready for the last two purposes: conformity and communication.
God’s purpose in talking to us and in us listening is so we might be conformed to the truth, which is to be conformed to the image of Jesus. “We are to listen in order to comprehend and to comprehend in order to be shaped and conformed to His truth. God never speaks in order to entertain us. God speaks that we may be made like Jesus” (p. 25-26). As we become like Jesus in our attitudes and behaviours, we can then communicate these truths to others. We can share the gospel, make disciples; we are NOT to keep this good news to ourselves. Now that we know God’s purposes in speaking to us are so we might understand truth leading to salvation, be conformed to truth leading to growth, and encouraged to communicate truth leading to discipleship, let us now look at His approaches.
The Approaches
God spoke to Adam when walking with him; He spoke to Moses from a burning bush; and God spoke to King David through the prophet Nathan. God really does have numerous ways that He will talk to us, so we need to understand some of the ways He will get our attention and how we can identify His voice. Don’t want any heretical ideas getting out there, so it is imperative we recognize the voice of God! Let’s begin with some attention getting strategies He uses.
This blog post will only tackle a few of the ten strategies, and we’ll start with a restless spirit. Stanley writes, “I believe one of the simplest ways God can get our attention is to make us restless. We may be going about our vocations, or our church or home lives when a restlessness begins to stir within our spirits. We can’t put a finger on it; we don’t even know why it is there; we can’t identify it, we don’t even know exactly what is happening—but we have an uneasiness in our hearts. When such a time comes, the wise thing to do is to stop and ask the Lord what He is trying to say” (p. 33). Prayer really is the key to finding God’s leading with a restless spirit. For Stanley, a restless spirit was often God’s way of preparing him for a move. In one particular instance in my life the restless spirit I had was one that just wanted to be removed from a difficult situation, to start fresh again. But through prayer, God showed my husband and I that we needed to stay, needed to see the challenge through. So pray, pray, pray, and proceed slowly as you wait to understand God’s leading.
The second method I want to highlight is unanswered prayer. We can “cruise along” when God is blessing us and giving us a time of rest. But what about when the answer to our prayer is silence? “Often, such seeming silence is a ripe time to conduct a spiritual self-examination under the illumination of the Holy Spirit” (p. 36). Are we asking for wrong reasons? Are we living in disobedience? Are we asking out of the will of God? Sometimes God is silent because He wants us more dependent on Him, as with the case with Paul and his “thorn in the flash” (II Corinthians 12:7). “Unanswered prayer brought Paul into a new dimension of dependence on God” (p. 37). Is that perhaps the case with us?
The last one to be mentioned in this blog is a hard pill to swallow: tragedy. “We can’t always view tragedy in a person’s life as a sign of God’s disapproval, but we should look at every tragic situation through a spiritual filter” (p. 45). The death of a child. The car accident that left your spouse paralysed. Cancer. A hurricane that destroyed your home. Such devastating events that seem all too common in a fallen world. But we have a promise we can cling to: Romans 8:28 says, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purposes.” God could be using a tragedy to draw you into a right relationship with Him. It could be to grow you spiritually and to prepare you for something in the future. It could be because He will be using you as a blessing in another’s life through this situation. By times, all we can do is pray and take the next step in faith knowing that God is with us, leading and speaking, though it might feel like a rather long conversation.
Now that God has our attention, how can we know for sure it is His voice? How do we identify Him? The biggest way to identify Him is by being familiar with the Bible, God’s written word to us. He will NEVER contradict Himself. So, “[t]hat is why if we neglect the Word of God and don’t build it into our lives, when Satan comes along we’re all too easily deceived. Since Almighty God never tells us to do anything to contradict His Word, the better we know it, the more readily we will identify His speaking Voice” (p.51). Only opening the bible randomly and sporadically won’t cut it. We must read it daily. Kind of like a phone call from your spouse verses one from an acquaintance. I can recognize my husband’s voice as soon as I pick up the phone, and no, I’m not cheating by looking at the caller ID. But a friend who never calls me, called the other day to discuss a church matter. She had to ask if it was me, then I had to ask who it was! Frequency and familiarity are key to recognizing God’s voice.
Though the next several chapters are filled with factors that affect how we listen, how to sit before the Lord, and how to have a right spiritual mind-set, I want to skip over to some hinderances to hearing from God. You’ll just have to read the book for yourself to get filled in!
The Hinderances
Now that we know God’s purposes and approaches, let’s touch on three of the ten hinderances in hearing from Him. Firstly, a poor self-image can keep us from hearing from our Creator. This hinderance shows itself by someone doubting God would even want to talk with him or her because he or she isn’t in ministry. There are even doubts that God truly loves them. Saved them, sure; but actually like them as a friend? Stanley writes, “truth is, we are saved, we are sanctified, we are saints, we are children of the living God. Fathers just naturally want to speak to their sons or daughters and to listen to them. Unfortunately, we often see ourselves in an unworthy light, and when we do, we wonder why a great, magnificent God would speak to us” (p. 125). And YET, He does. Such amazing grace! We can cast aside those feelings and know God will and wants to speak to us and have us speak to Him.
Secondly, busyness can keep us from hearing from God. “It is easy in the midst of all the clamoring voices of our society to miss the still small Voice of God” (p. 127). Are we too involved in the rat race? Or are we striking that balance between responsibility and relationship? “If we walk in the Spirit, we have learned to carry out our job and family functions while being able to commune with the heavenly Father. We cannot separate the spiritual and secular because God indwells our lives; He is in the midst of all we do and say” (p. 127). It is imperative that we make every effort to have a quiet time with God, as well as pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17). Keep the conversation going all day.
Lastly, are we harbouring sin? Stanley differentiates between committing a sin and then asking forgiveness and harbouring a sin which means “knowing a sin is present, knowing God has put His finger on it, and still not settling it” (p. 129-139). Are you hiding the beer bottles out in the garbage cans when family comes over? Are you censoring what you watch and listen? Are you hanging out with friends who are leading you down a path you should not be going? Have you held on to old habits and lifestyle choices from your pre-salvation days? What do you justify that God has convicted you of? He can’t speak to us unless sin is out of the way.
So, my friend, are you ready to borrow this book by Charles Stanley? Are you ready to hear from God?
Work Cited
Stanley, Charles. “How To Listen to God.” Thomas Nelson, Inc. 1985.
Scripture quotations are from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD VERSION.
A blog post by Nathalie Davidson
January 16, 2023.