Listen, Hear

I couldn't write this essay if I hadn't made so many mistakes. And I probably wouldn't want to.

1. The idea of this essay.

Hearing God is a struggle for me. I accept that some of what I hear is from God. Some is not. And sometimes what I hear from God is not clear.

To be guided by God is glorious and humbling. It's humbling, for me at least, because the uncertainty of it puts me face-to-face with the difference between me and the chosen disciples of Jesus. Jesus spoke in parables to the crowds; to the disciples he spoke plainly. I am more of the crowd than among the disciples, as my uncertainty about what follows shows.

That's fine. It compels me to seek God, which is what I want.

So these are ideas about hearing from God. The ideas are roughly in the order that they came to me as I wrote. The ideas tied to scripture are trustworthy. Hopefully, all of them at least circle scripture.

Clearly, these aren't rules, for three reasons. First, these ideas can’t contain the Lord. God breaks out of neat rules. Second, everyone is different; everyone’s experience of God is in some way different from anyone else’s. Third, I’m learning, myself.

So these are my assumptions.

2. Ideas about knowing God’s will.

I

The Bible is the foundation of knowledge of God’s will.

God can use whatever he wants to reveal his will.

Knowing God’s will is priceless. Our lives started a short time ago; he was before the universe. We see around us; his vision is infinite. "God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything." (1 John 3:20 (NRSV).)

God’s will is trustworthy. Our futures are safer in his hands than in our own.

Time usually is our friend to understand God’s will. When there is urgency, God can tell us. But we drive most haste, not God.

When we ask for guidance, we don’t necessarily get it right away.

When we ask for guidance, we don’t necessarily get what we expect. We don’t necessarily get the answer we want. God is unpredictable.

II

God rarely, if ever, speaks through lust. A spiritual person rarely says, "I think I’ll consult my sexual urges about that." (Or greed, or selfish ambition, or pride, for that matter.)

There are godly spirits, and there are un-godly spirits. Christianity, in some of its forms, loses much when it believes only in benign spirits. We can be fooled if we don’t know that some spirits are malign. "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world." (I John 4:1 (NRSV).)
 
Our wish for something alone doesn’t mean that it’s God’s will. We need to pray for wisdom and seek confirmation.

Our opposition to something alone doesn't mean that it’s God's will. We need to pray for a will conformed to God’s, so that our own stubbornness is not a barrier; but we need to seek confirmation.

Sometimes we learn the why of God’s will only with time; and sometimes not in this lifetime. There’s stuff going on in heaven and earth, and we have no idea.

Peace is a better mark of God’s will than anxiety. Sometimes it pays to pray until we have peace.

Guidance that appeals to love is more likely from God than guidance that appeals to ambition.

III

Sometimes we know that God is guiding us; often we don’t, even if he is.

"[T]he wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy." (James 3:17 (NRSV).)

It may be easier to follow guidance about things that seem small, than about things that seem big. Like what to wear or where to have dinner, compared to who to marry or where to live. The importance of small-seeming things may be the practice they give on calling on the Lord, or in hearing him.

Discernment of spirits – telling which are from God and which are not – gets better over time with experience and reflection.

Discernment of spirits is one of the spiritual gifts mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12. Believers generally have these gifts in some degree. (They include, for example, faith and wisdom.) But some believers have an unusual, high ability at one or more of them.

It helps to seek prayer-support from others we trust to know God’s will.

It helps to seek counsel from others we trust to know God’s will.

IV

God told Abraham to sacrifice his son (and stopped him from sacrificing his son). We are not Abraham.

It's valuable to talk to others about how to know God's will.

Sometimes God addresses us, but we misunderstand his message.

Sometimes we make assumptions about God's meaning that go beyond his message.

 Persistence pays off. Or not. God is God. And that's a good thing.

We often want to know the wrong things.

We need to have a practice of worship and prayer and praise and thanksgiving and confession and study and meditation before we suddenly need to know God’s will. But it would likely be a mistake to let any lack of these things stop someone from calling on the Lord. Every journey has a start. Some journeys have many starts.

V

It helps to be in a supportive community when we call on the Lord. But any lack of community shouldn’t stop a person from calling on the Lord.

We all make mistakes. Sometimes, through a mystery of grace, our mistakes turn out to be the will of God.

Blessing follows obedience. Sometimes soon; sometimes not soon. Sometimes visible; sometimes invisible.

God guides us through circumstances. We need to practice looking for what God is doing, to join him in it. For this we need new eyes for God’s will that don’t look through lenses of our appetites.

Opposition and difficulty don’t necessarily mean that God is against what we’re doing; an open door doesn’t mean he’s necessarily for it.

Our appetites, fears, and frailties can interfere with our willing spirits like cataracts interfere with sight.

When God brings about circumstances, it may be a mistake to think that we know why he has done what he has done. It’s always a mistake to think that we know every reason. God’s thoughts and his purposes are higher than ours.

VI

The better we know God’s character, the easier it is to know God’s will. At the end of a lifetime of study, our knowledge will be finite.
 
The better we know ourselves, the better we know how our own desires and ambitions color our knowledge of God’s will. We may be blind to own flaws, or how they influence us.

"There's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will." (Hamlet)

Sometimes we have to act before we’re sure. That’s easier with smaller things than with bigger things.

God’s will can become more clear as we take a step of faith.

Frank Laubach was a missionary and a renowned 20^th Century mystic. He said, "Talk a great deal to the Lord."

Frank Laubach also urged a lot of inner-quiet and listening.

VII

If we try to hear God, we need to be ready to accept the silence of God. There may also be times when we need to listen to that silence.

The best equipment to hear God is a willing spirit, a listening ear, and patience.

Nobody was ever harmed by praying for wisdom.

Nobody was ever harmed by praying for a spirit that desires to do God’s will.

Nobody was ever harmed by praying for humility.

Nobody was ever harmed by praying for God to search their hearts with them.

Nobody was ever harmed by praying to know God.

3. Prayer.

Lord, guide us. Teach us to trust, hear, and follow. Amen.