Do you hear God speaking to you?
Silence
“Be still and know that I am God” (Ps. 46:10). Being still, or practising silence, is my first suggestion in a course for retraining perceptions.
My primary focus isn’t so much on literal silence (though it can’t hurt); it’s on quieting our voices and hearts enough to listen. Those who would truly hear any other, and indeed the ultimate Other, must relinquish control over what’s said. They must render themselves vulnerable to hearing something they didn’t already expect or might not want to hear. They must hold their tongue, quiet their hearts, be still, and practice silence. For the nations, silence may be an all too awkward reminder that their hopes are set on “speechless idols.” In stark contrast, the prophet says, “The LORD is in his holy temple.” What, then, to do first? “Hush before him!” (Hab. 2:20, my translation).
To be sure, the practice of Christian silence is no mere negation. We need to hush our murmurings, our many petitions, the voicing of our expectations placed upon God. Yet strangely, such silence is rife with expectation, for our God is no idol.
Scripture
“Hear, O my people, and I will speak” (Ps. 50:7). It’s possible for us to “hear back” from God the way I first heard Messiah: ignorant about what we hear, untaught concerning what to listen for, missing much without realizing it. At an extreme, we may miss God’s answers to prayer for paying attention to the wrong things.
For example, suppose the chief answers we look for (and, preceding that, the only prayers we earnestly pray) come as healing from a terminal disease. In that case, we may miss God’s mighty and merciful presence in sustaining faith and empowering to die well. We might then be tempted to think of the abiding suffering and prospect of death as God’s cold shoulder.
How would we know to listen for God’s loving and wise response to his children’s cries even in (not around) suffering and dying? What could help us hear such minor key “music?” When it comes to Messiah, my learning more about the composer Handel has gone some way toward cultivating a better ear for his music. Indeed, similarly, learning more about the composer of the true music of reality goes a good way to help us hear. We might develop a better ear by attending to God’s self-revelatory word, meditating on how he has acted in history, and pondering his promises and what he says he’s committed to doing in our lives.
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Set Times for Prayer
“Give us this day our daily bread” (Matt. 6:11). The request might be translated as “Give us our bread for this day ahead.” Jesus teaches us to pray not for a fortnight’s worth of groceries in our cupboards but simply for today’s needs. It’s reasonable to suppose that the Lord means for us to pray the prayer daily,3 even to pray it first thing daily. Prayer at the beginning of the day is another perception-cultivating practice for the life of prayer.
Through setting apart time at the day’s outset to pray the Lord’s Prayer, we name in truth any bread appearing in the day ahead as a gift to be received from the Giver, the better to disabuse us of a materially godless outlook. More significantly, we ready ourselves to receive our lunch when it comes as not simply any old gift but also a specific, palpable answer to our prayer. Then, as we set aside time at the day’s end for evening prayer, we’ll have ample opportunity to recognize that we have “heard back” from our good heavenly Father and to thank him for it.
God would daily be discerned as answering our prayers and thus known as an attentive, ever-caring, responsive Father. How often do we miss it for not setting aside time daily to pray and pay attention?
Supplicating Regularly with Others
“We recount your wondrous deeds” (Ps. 75:1). God constantly answers our prayers, often in ways that are easy to “hear”—to see, to taste, to recognize and discern. To better hear them and hear them more often, we develop the regular habit of praying with and for the whole church.
My church gathers every Lord’s Day for an evening prayer service. From week to week through the year, I join in praying for others’ good and growth in Christ, and I hear many thanksgivings recounting how God is answering these prayers in the lives of varying brothers and sisters around me. It might be easy for me to pray in isolation, not discerning answers related to my personal needs, to feel like I’ve not heard back from God in a long time. It’s harder to spiral down to this, or the seasons of silence are shorter when I regularly gather with others to pray.
God constantly answers our prayers, often in ways that are easy to “hear”—to see, taste, recognize, and discern.
Seeking to Hear God in Jesus’s Name
“In that day you will ask in my name” (John 16:26). Any good answer we hear back from God is assuredly something we receive only in and through Jesus. By way of reminder, it is good practice to—with consistency—pray explicitly in the name of Christ. But doing so also is part of cultivating joy-giving, hope-enlivening hearing of God.
Too often, our prayers are twinged with anxiety that the starting point in the labour of prayer is basically an absent and silent God. That is to say, the real starting point must be our praying well enough to get God to show up and speak. Yet the word we most desperately need has already been spoken—the word which is Christ crucified, risen, ascended, and reigning for the good of all who believe and most certainly returning. Praying in Christ’s name is praying that remembers, pays attention to, and listens first and foremost to that word.
Here is the beginning of truly hearing back from God, hearing the word that quiets our anxieties and gives us rest and joy. Here, in the Son’s name, we may even be emboldened to pray more fervently and expectantly: “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Rom. 8:32). Those who pray in Christ’s name truly hear back from God in their most pressing need and are strengthened in hope that they will continue to hear in days to come.
Notes:
G. K. Chesteron, Orthodoxy (repr., Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2006), 154–55.
R. S. Thomas, “But the silence in the mind,” in Collected Later Poems: 1988–2000 (Hexham, Northumberland: Bloodaxe, 2004), 118.
As Matt Jenson and David Wilhite comment, “The food we buy at the grocery store lasts long enough, and our refrigerators are cold enough, that we can go weeks without praying for daily bread. This is probably bad for our souls” (The Church: A Guide for the Perplexed [London: T&T Clark, 2010], 219).
