How to Hear God: A Simple Guide for Normal People

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And it’s the key to discipleship. Jesus says in John 10:27, he says, “My sheep know my voice. They listen to me. I know them and they follow me.” And so the key to Christianity is to listen to God. So it’s massively, this is probably the most important thing you’ll ever learn to do, to listen to God. And then part two, you get into God’s Whisper. What does it mean that the Creator of the universe whispers? I mean, that’s not, I think, what most of us would expect to hear from God, a whisper. In largely focusing on Lectio as a means of "Hearing God" in scripture there was a tendency to dismiss other means of reading the Bible devotionally, particularly reading larger sections that give us a greater sense of the narrative, and which would have been, in the absence of personal Bibles and chapter and verse, to original way in which scripture would literally have been "heard" rather than the atomised, bite-sized approach that has been the norm of too many evangelical Bible notes, and into which Lectio can easily descend.

This has been a super helpful complementary resource as my church has been talking about knowing God’s voice. It really is “a simple guide for normal people.” Very easy to understand and really helped me make sense of the different categories in which God speaks to us. Bio: Pete Greig cofounded and champions the 24-7 Prayer movement, which has reached more than half the nations on earth. He is a pastor at Emmaus Rd. in Guildford, England, and has written a number of bestselling books, including God on Mute, Red Moon Rising, Dirty Glory, and How to Pray. One individual may indeed be flooded with feelings of peace when they propose to their girlfriend, whileanother may be utterly terrified. This probably says more about the way that person is wired than it does about the will of God for their lives. You may remember Pete from Episode 71 of this podcast, when we talked with him about a simple guide for how to pray.

Church Times/Sarum College:

Pete Greig: Yeah. And yet it’s one of the things I love most about God, and I think I probably had to unlearn and relearn most. Because you’re right, our assumption is if God speaks to me, it’s going to be a booming voice. It’s going to be unmistakable, angels, dramatic. And yet, mostly he speaks to us quietly and silently. I tell in the book, lots of examples of times that people just miss Jesus completely. They just miss him. There’s the couple on the road to Emmaus. As a book, this is a simple read, but this is not a negative on the book, but rather it corresponds well to readers who may be new to the faith, new to spiritual disciplines – or are emerging form foundational programs such as Alpha. In many ways, this book is an authoritative collective of the wisdom and works of some of the greats of the faith but it includes the insight, commentary and stories from Pete’s experiences and life. Fellow Author, Shane Claiborne, comments similarly, saying that “this book draws from the well of wisdom that has nourished the faithful for centuries.” Though this is not some new deep academic and intellectual read on the desert fathers or the spiritual disciplines, it certainly could be seen as one of the best introductory looks at spiritual disciplines – and it’s well done. For this reason, I see it as a Spirit-focused and spirit-renewed version of Richard Foster’s classic, Celebration of Discipline. I suspect Pete Greig’s work in How to Hear God will now be the book I refer others to first in conversations around spiritual disciplines. How to Hear God is published by HarperCollins Christian Publishing, Inc., the parent company of Bible Gateway.

The book comes in two parts: Part 1; vox eterna; Hearing God through God’s Word and Part 2: vox interna; Hearing God through God’s whisper. Part 1: God’s Word So I find that reassuring because I don’t find listening to God particularly easy. And I just love the fact that they clearly struggled a bit too.

So we have a God who communicates. So that would be a very short book. If the book was the fact that God speaks, it’s just, he does. The issue is psychology. The issue is each of us is wired differently. So how do we receive what God is saying? And sometimes our problem is either that we are expecting to hear God the way someone else does and we’re just wired differently. Or we are expecting to hear God the way he spoke to us in the past, but he’s speaking to us in a new way in our new context. Don't we all want to hear from God? How much easier our lives would be if we could hear his voice and follow his direction. I love Pete's writing because it is easy to understand. The simple way he handles difficult subjects in How to Hear God makes this book compelling. If you really want to grow on this journey of hearing God, here is the book that will help you grow immensely.' senior pastor of Jesus House London Agu Irukwu Find the 24-7 Prayer Lectio 365 app, a free daily devotional resource that helps you pray the Bible every day. How we hear God speak is about how our neural pathways have learned to receive and process data, and this varies from person to person 2. THEOLOGICAL In Bible times, dreams were one of the most consistent and powerful ways in which God communicated. This is particularly worth noting because it’s perhaps one of the least respected and least practised ways of listening to God in the West today. The fact is that almost every major character in the Bible received highly significant dreams or visions from God. Some were symbolic, others were warnings, and many were a means of specific guidance. The primary mark of the outpouring of the Spirit on all flesh in these last days, according to Joel and cited by Peter, is not speaking in tongues, shaking or falling to the ground but an increase in dreams and visions. If you are filled with the Spirit, you should therefore expect God to speak to you in this way. 5. Community, creation and culture

Pete Greig: I use Bible Gateway every single day of my life. Often repeatedly. I cannot tell you how grateful I am for this extraordinary resource. I recently undertook a 330-mile solitary pilgrimage from the Scottish island of Iona to the Northumbrian island of Lindisfarne. Both these islands were centers of Christian faith and evangelization in the 7th and 8th centuries AD. Lindisfarne is particularly famous for the Lindisfarne Gospels. These are breathtakingly beautiful hand-written transcriptions of the Gospels illustrated in bright colors with wonderful designs. They’re one of the most treasured ancient manuscripts in all antiquity. It’s worth remembering how precious and rare the Bible was for many centuries so that we can be truly grateful for Bible Gateway that makes it so easily accessible in so many different versions and languages. What a wonderful gift God has given us in his Word, and in this technology that enables us to read it (and pray it) so easily. One of my main takeaways is this: if I were stranded on a deserted island and all I had was a Bible, that really would be sufficient. However, there are so many other ways that God can speak to us, and I want to grow in my desire for those. I don’t want to miss out on all the creative ways God talks to me.

Pete Greig: Yeah, it is one of the expressions Jesus uses more than any other. And so it was like his catchphrase. And it’s crazy when you think that in Jesus’ time he could be walking through your town, like being Jesus Christ, like speaking things that no one had ever heard, doing miracles. And some people were probably just too busy at work to bother to come out in the streets. Each one of us has been born with an extraordinary superpower: an innate ability to hear the voice of God. Discerning God’s voice is one of the most astounding yet confusing things a human being can 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 100 billion galaxies (Genesis 1:3). “The Lord merely spoke, and the heavens were created. He breathed the word, and all the stars were born” (Psalm 33:6, NLT). What on earth might happen if he were to speak a few words to me? Rarely in any of our lifetimes have we so acutely needed to hear the Lord’s voice: both his word, so that we as hisChurch might navigate such dangerous days with clarity and courage, but also his whisper, so that we as individuals might know the particular guidance and comfort of his presence day by day. We live in noisy and bewildering times, full of distractions. Things are moving fast all around us. And I believe that now, more than ever, we need to learn how to be still, how to slow down, how to plug ourselves in to hear the voice of God more clearlyamid the clatter and clamour of the world. Christin Thieme: Yeah. I love that analogy that you give of the window frame and the picture frame, moving beyond seeing Scripture just objectively, but how do you receive it personally and make it that conversation? So there’s lots of really practical tools in the book, and that is a great one to start with.