Most of us were taught how to talk to God. Very few of us were taught how to listen.
The boy Samuel was lying down in the temple when he heard his name. He ran to Eli three times before the old priest realized what was happening and gave him the best prayer advice in the Old Testament: go lie down, and if he calls you, say, “Speak, Lord, for your servant hears” (1 Samuel 3:9). Notice the order. Samuel had been serving in the house of the Lord, but “the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him” (3:7). You can be busy around God for years and still not know what his voice sounds like.
Jesus says, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27). That is not a promise for spiritual elites. It is a description of ordinary sheep. So the question is not whether God speaks. It is whether we have learned to recognize him, and whether we have made any room to hear.
The church has been working on this for two thousand years. The desert fathers, the medieval monks, the Puritans and, in our own day, John Mark Comer all have something to teach us. Here is what I have learned from them.
1. Start where God has already spoken
If you want to hear God, open your Bible. That sounds too simple, but it is the foundation everything else stands on.
The Puritans were passionate about communion with God, and they were careful about it for the same reason. The Westminster Confession (1646) says nothing is to be added to Scripture “by new revelations of the Spirit.” In the same paragraph it insists that the “inward illumination of the Spirit of God” is necessary to understand what Scripture says. Both halves matter. The Spirit does not compete with the Word. He opens it.
This is freeing. You do not have to wonder whether God is willing to speak to you today. He has already spoken, and he is still speaking through what he said. When a verse you have read a hundred times suddenly lands on your chest with weight, that is not a coincidence. That is the voice of the Shepherd.
It also keeps us safe. A voice that contradicts Scripture is not God’s, no matter how strong the feeling. The more of the Bible you carry around in your head, the easier it is to recognize his voice and to spot a counterfeit.
2. Get quiet enough to hear
God is not usually louder than your phone. Elijah did not find him in the wind, the earthquake or the fire, but in “the sound of a low whisper” (1 Kings 19:12). You cannot hear a whisper in a room full of noise.
The desert fathers of the fourth century understood this. A young monk once asked Abba Moses for a word of wisdom. The old man told him, “Go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.” He was not being lazy with his answer. He meant that if you stay put in the quiet long enough, you will run out of distractions and come face to face with your own heart and with God.
John Mark Comer has brought this old wisdom to a distracted generation. In The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, he argues that hurry is one of the great enemies of the spiritual life, because a hurried soul cannot be present to God, to others or to itself. His answer is not a new technique but an ancient one: silence and solitude, practiced daily. He describes it as the practice that makes all the other practices possible. In Practicing the Way he frames the whole Christian life as being with Jesus, becoming like him and doing what he did, and “being with” comes first.
Practically, that means a time and a place. Jesus “would withdraw to desolate places and pray” (Luke 5:16). Pick a chair. Pick a time, ideally before the phone comes on. Expect the first several minutes to be loud on the inside. That is normal. The noise settles if you stay.
3. Read slowly, then pray what you read
The church has a long tradition of reading Scripture not just for information but for conversation.
Around 1150, a monk named Guigo II wrote The Ladder of Monks, describing four rungs: reading, meditation, prayer and contemplation. His summary is worth memorizing: seek in reading and you will find in meditation; knock in prayer and it will be opened to you in contemplation. Read a short passage. Chew on it. Talk to God about it. Then rest and let him have the last word.
Martin Luther taught something similar to his barber, Peter, in A Simple Way to Pray (1535). He suggested taking a commandment or a line of Scripture and weaving it into a “garland” of four strands: what it teaches, what it gives me to be thankful for, what it calls me to confess, and what it leads me to ask. Then he added a striking word. If, while you pray, your heart is suddenly flooded with good thoughts, stop working through your list and listen. The Holy Spirit himself is preaching, he said, and one word of his sermon is better than a thousand of our prayers.
The Puritans called this meditation, and they treated it as the missing link between reading and real change. Thomas Watson put it memorably: the reason we come away so cold from reading the word is that we do not warm ourselves at the fire of meditation. Richard Baxter spent a whole book, The Saints’ Everlasting Rest, teaching people to set aside time to think hard about one truth until it moved their hearts.
Listening to God is usually not a voice out of nowhere. It is a verse that will not let you go.
4. Test what you think you heard
Scripture tells us, “Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:20–21). Our hearts are good at dressing up our own wishes in God’s voice. A few questions help:
- Does it agree with Scripture? God will not tell you to do what his Word forbids. This is the first and final test.
- Does it sound like Jesus? His voice is often searching, but it is never cruel. Conviction from the Spirit is specific and leads you to the cross. Condemnation from the accuser is vague and leads you to hide.
- What do wise believers say? The desert monks brought their thoughts to an elder before acting on them. Bring what you are sensing to your pastor, your small group or a mature friend. God’s voice survives being said out loud.
- What fruit does it bear over time? John Flavel, in The Mystery of Providence, warned that some providences, like Hebrew letters, must be read backward. Not everything is clear in the moment. Obey what you know, and let time confirm the rest.
The goal is not certainty about every impression. The goal is a growing familiarity with the Shepherd, so that over the years you recognize his voice the way you recognize your spouse’s voice on the phone.
A 15-minute listening practice
If you want to start tomorrow, here is a simple rhythm that pulls these threads together.
- Settle (2 minutes). Phone in another room. Sit still. Pray Samuel’s prayer: “Speak, Lord, for your servant hears.”
- Read (3 minutes). Read a short passage slowly, maybe twice. A psalm or a few verses from a Gospel is plenty.
- Meditate (4 minutes). Notice which word or phrase catches you. Turn it over. Why this, today?
- Pray (3 minutes). Use Luther’s garland: what is God teaching me, what am I thankful for, what do I need to confess, what will I ask?
- Listen (2 minutes). Stop talking. Rest in his presence. If a thought, a person or a nudge comes to mind, write it down without judging it yet.
- Respond (1 minute). Name one thing to do today in light of what you read. Then go do it.
Some mornings it will feel like nothing happened. Keep showing up. Most of what God does in us happens in the dark, the way roots grow.
The Shepherd is already speaking
Augustine began his Confessions by telling God that our hearts are restless until they rest in him. Much of our trouble hearing God is just restlessness: too much noise, too much hurry, too little time in the Word.
The good news is that the Shepherd is not hard to find. He came looking for us. He is speaking through his Word, by his Spirit, among his people. Our part is to slow down, open the book and say with Samuel, “Speak, Lord, for your servant hears.” Then, like Samuel, get up and do what he says.