Sometimes I yell at God. Usually this happens when God is speaking to me, and His words smack up against my child-like willfulness, my clenched fists, and my haughty arrogance. Most days I am certain that I know the best way to live, and I don’t need anyone, especially God telling me otherwise. I have felt this way at every major decision point in my life where God is clearly speaking to me and asking me to follow Him, to take a gigantic risk, and plunge into an unknown future with Him.
I resisted His voice with vehemence when He called me into the work of ministry, when He pointed me toward a life overseas, when He led us to adopt the second time, and when He asked me to move to the inner city. We so often want to hear God’s voice so that we can discern His will for our lives, but as David Benner points out, our problem is that “we normally assume that the challenge is how to know [God’s will] rather than how to choose it.”
In my moments of resistance, I think God is smirking, like I do when my own child is throwing an irrational tantrum. He knows, and frankly, I know as well, that surrender isn’t far away. While my selfishness and willfulness are still alive and well after many years of following Jesus, I have also learned on the roller-coaster ride that is my life, that choosing God is choosing my best life. When I step into His plan for my life, He makes me more fully the person He created me to be, and I am fulfilling my unique part in His kingdom vision for this world. This is the foundation of discerning God’s will—grasping God’s deep love for us as individuals and trusting His benevolence towards us.
Even with the right foundation, discerning God’s will requires a certain posture. Richard Foster says, “[Jesus’] voice is not hard to hear; his vocabulary is not difficult to understand. But learning to listen well and to hear correctly is no small task.” Here are a few practices that have been indispensible to me over the years when seeking God’s will.
WAYS TO HEAR AND DISCERN GOD'S WILL
1. Silence and Solitude
We live in a noisy world. Every day, we are bombarded with information, busyness, and incessant cacophony. Like Pavlov’s dog, I run to my phone with every ding. Unfortunately for us, God very rarely shouts over the noise. He’s not going to compete for our attention. We see this with Elijah in 1 Kings 19 when God does not speak in the wind or the earthquake or the fire, but in a whisper. It’s in silence and solitude that we shut out the outside world so that we can be with God and only God. Ruth Haley Barton says that silence and solitude “create space to listen to the knowings that go beyond words.”
By nature, I am a doer. Anyone who knows me would describe me as a person who gets it done, so it’s extremely difficult for me to be still. However, I’ve discovered that without stillness, I am tempted to live my life completely within my own volition, shutting out the voice of God. It’s only when I stop, that I can hear.
2. Listening Prayer
When we retreat to our place of silence and solitude, we find God waiting there. He longs for intimacy with us. Our temptation is to hide and to fill the space with words, so we monopolize our time with God with our endless chatter, as our churches have taught us to do, and then wonder why we cannot hear God’s voice. It takes time and practice to quiet our minds, and to free up space for God’s whisper. In the quietness, we turn our hearts toward God and truly enact the verse, “Be still and know that I am God” (Ps. 46:10). Practices like Lectio Divina, which focuses on allowing the Holy Spirit to speak to us through Scripture, can be a starting point for listening prayer. However, the linchpin is releasing control of our spiritual disciplines to-do list, and allowing God to frame and fill the moment.
When all four of my children were finally in all-day school, this freed up some time for me, but I wasn’t sure how I to use it. I didn’t want to jump into any new work, projects, volunteering, or relationships without first sitting with God and hearing from Him about this new stage of life. I spent six months engaging in extended periods of listening and reflection. Those months proved invaluable for me to deepen my intimacy with God, to process truths about pain in my life, to prepare my heart for a new journey, and to discern God’s leading.
3. Fasting
During times when I am desperate to hear God’s voice, when I’m stuck or aimless, I always incorporate fasting as a way to open my soul to a greater awareness of God.
After several years of waiting on our second adoption, it seemed like the adoption wasn’t going to happen. We began to doubt whether we were on the right path. In the midst of waiting for one child, another child became available for immediate adoption. I was confused, so I started fasting and praying one day a week. In the absence of any new guidance from God and remembering the unequivocal voice of God that led us to this decision several years prior, I sensed God confirming that we should continue in our current journey. Not long after releasing this anxiety-ridden process to God, we were traveling to meet our new daughter.
4. Small Moments
Ultimately learning to hear God, discerning His will, and choosing to follow is not only for the big, life-altering decisions, but also for the small, everyday moments. For God doesn’t only speak to us about what we do—our jobs or careers—but He speaks to who we are as whole people. We can choose to hear and respond to God as we parent our children, love our spouses, interact with friends, and do our work. The little moments of listening and obeying make the big moments easier, and God’s faithfulness in the big moments in turn fuel our everyday openness to hearing God’s voice.
The small moments are always more difficult for me. I can take big leaps of faith and trust that God will catch me, but when my stubborn, selfish, willful self is prompted by God to respond with love, kindness, and generosity there is often a real fight going on in my soul. Ann Voskamp says, “Theology can be talked about on Sundays…but it’s lived in kitchens or dies at tables.”
I hope as I continue my journey and am transformed by Christ that listening to God and choosing to follow will become second nature. Richard Foster says, “As we follow God’s lead, we enter more and more into the divine Stride, turning where God turns, accepting God’s ways and finding them altogether good.” The thrill that I experience when I know that I am firmly standing in the center of God’s will for my life is a joy like no other. In those moments I am caught up in the flow of God’s Spirit and His kingdom-building work. May God attune our ears to His whisper so that we may find life.
