Listening to God is even more important than learning to talk with God. God does want to have us pour out our heart, our thoughts, our feelings, and everything we are concerned about. Some believers never get past this, they simply vomit up all of their feelings when they meet with God and then they walk off—never having heard his gracious response to all of their babbling. These believers think that prayer is mostly a one-way conversation, sort of like a little kid on the department store Santa’s knee, where they get to reel off their wish list for Christmas.
This monologue approach to prayer misses the most important part—hearing what God has to say to you. God is just overflowing with love, compassion, mercy, wisdom, guidance, and help that he wants to pour into your life in a very special, individual, and personal way. If you simply drop your load of woe and take off without listening, you never receive any of the precious love gifts the Father wants to give you.
So how do you learn to listen to God? Let me suggest several ways that you can learn to improve your listening skills (most of us, myself included, could use help with this) and discover all the wonderful things God wants to say to you. There are lots of ways to listen to God, but they all have one thing in common. Solitude is the key to hearing God’s voice. Most of us lead busy, active lives. If we want to hear from God, we are going to have to learn to slow down and to listen to God. If you look at Jesus in the New Testament, he was always going off alone to a place where he could be still and quiet so he could talk to his heavenly Father. Psalm 46:10 says, “Be still and know that I am God.” If you want to have God speak to you directly and personally, you will need to seek a place of solitude and quiet without distractions. This could be in your bedroom, the corner of the garage, in your car, in a public park, in the reading stacks of a library. But you need to get still, get quiet, and be able to focus your mind and your spirit on God and then wait patiently to hear what he has to say to you.
I often do this by sitting in my prayer chair clearing my mind, taking a pen and a clean pad of paper and asking God what he wants to say to me. I’m thinking he’s going to tell me to move to Madison, Wisconsin, change careers, or go be a missionary in the Bongo Congo in Africa. I’m so focused on doing and the activities in my life that I simply don’t get what God is all about. Instead of telling me to do something, he will often say, “I love you, Bruce. Trust me. Relax in my love. I will never leave you nor abandon you.”
God’s voice is not audible to me. Some people say they hear him speak. I’ve only heard him speak to me out loud once. Usually he speaks to me by moving in my spirit and giving me very clear impressions about what he wants to say to me. I’ll write these thoughts down on my pad. Then I’ll say, “Is this really you, Lord? Is this really what you are saying to me? Could this be the wanderings of my imagination or something greasy I ate for breakfast?” And God will patiently repeat his message to me again and again until I get it. That is why the paper and pen helps. I guess I’m a slow study and it helps to go back and to see what God has been telling me.
Journaling is a big part of my communicating with God. Each day when I sit down with God, I open up my notebook (an inexpensive spiral bound student notebook) and record where I’m at as I start that day. It’s my way to check in with God. Then I spend some time reading the Bible and when God gives me a new insight from His Word, I’ll record those “ah-ha’s” in my journal. Then I’ll pray and as I talk with God if he gives me special messages or new insights, again these go down in the journal.