How to Hear From God

when you're not a super-spiritual, supernatural superpower

A couple of months ago, my husband and I sat at a Dominican bar, sipping caipirinhas with another American couple from Washington, D.C.

They were on their honeymoon and—as my husband put it—their shoulders hadn’t dropped yet.¹ You know the type? Glowing skin. Youthful ambition. The world, their oyster?

But, beneath the surface, there were questions bubbling. The existential type. [I don’t know what it is, but I’ve got a sixth sense for this in people. If you’re trying to hide a mid-life crisis, don’t come talking to me. I’ll sniff that out in no time flat.] As the conversation inevitably turned to what we do and it was my turn to share, I mentioned that I’m a writer, and braced for the question that always comes next.

“What do you write about?”

I wish I loved this question, but out in the wild, most people look at you like a certified lunatic when you say you write about God, and it does get tiresome. When it came out that I am also pursuing my Master of Divinity, the young D.C. consultant-type looked me in the eye with genuine confusion and asked, “But why?”

I knew this would get a rise out of him too, so I said, “Well, because I believe God asked me to.”

He snorted. “How do YOU hear from God? I wish he’d talk to me.”

Here’s the thing: I heard the skepticism and sarcasm in his voice. It wasn’t lost on me. But you know what else I picked up on? The pleading in his eyes. The little flicker that betrayed the truth that he did, in fact, wish God would talk to him.

And I think what he asked is the same question that so many of us wonder—whether we’ve grown up on a steady diet of Gospel or we’ve never stepped foot in a church. It’s not something that’s often taught—likely because the ways we hear from God are unique and personalized (isn’t God cool in that way?) and hard to outline in a 3-point sermon. Perhaps it’s also because it feels weird, or unsafe, or uncertain.

So instead of getting details we can actually work with, we’re just told to pray. But if we’ve never been taught how, we don’t know how. So we sit. We say some words. We don’t hear anything. We get bored. We walk away. We don’t feel all that inclined to do it again.

But I am convinced—utterly convinced—that we all actually do want to hear from God, even if we only ever dare to admit it to strangers in a Dominican bar. And I’ll tell you why I think this: because we are all wired to speak the mother tongue of the Father. It is our native language. And though that language has maybe fallen dormant from disuse, when we are given the tools to hear God in his language, our spirits stir—and we, too, realize we are bilingual.

So today I am hoping to offer something useful in terms of learning to hear from God. I am going to share a conversation that I had with him earlier this week, and try to explain, in these flat two-dimensional letters of ours, what it was like.

It will inevitably fall short. But what I want to communicate is this: it is possible to encounter God. It is possible to be changed after these encounters. And it is not a privilege reserved only for the “ultra-spiritual.” You, too, are bilingual. You know this language, even if you’ve never spoken it aloud before.

My Conversation with God

Before this conversation happened, I was in a quiet place, and my body was very still. And while I believe we can also talk to God in chaos and noise [a.k.a. my home every night around dinnertime], I do believe that silence is most conducive for hearing back from him. The prophet Elijah heard from God not in the wind or the earthquake or the fire, but in a still small voice (1 Kings 19:11-13).

Side note: Did you ever have a teacher who could command a classroom of unruly hooligans by whispering? Their authority was so great that they didn’t need to raise their voice to be heard; rather, the class knew they had to become silent in order to hear the important words of their teacher. Well, think of God as the Teacher.

My body was still, but my mind was turbulent. Something was bothering me. So—in the silence of my mind—I said to God, “This is bothering me. I am afraid. Help.”

And this is when I heard God say—like a thought that came through my mind that didn’t sound like my own inner dialogue, “Haven’t I gotten you through every difficult thing? So too will I help you in your greatest fears.”

So I’ve just established one way I hear from God: through an inner dialogue with a voice that is very different than my own. When I think I hear something from God in this voice but am not sure it’s from him, I test it. I ask, “Is this in keeping with God’s character? Does it match up with true things he says in the Bible?” If the answer is yes, and yes, and my spirit feels peaceful, I have a pretty good sense it’s from him. In this case, it is in keeping with God’s character to help us through difficult things—in fact, he has helped me with many difficult things in my life—and Scripture confirms that he will help us when we are afraid (Isaiah 41:10, Psalm 23:4, Hebrews 13:6, etc.). And the sound of his voice brought a great sense of peace into my spirit, almost instantaneously.

Now, I will share a second way I “hear” from God: through pictures in my mind. Think of it this way: You know how when you are reading a chapter book, your brain will create an image of what you’re reading in your mind’s eye so that you can picture what’s happening and understand the storyline more clearly? That’s what can happen in prayer, too. Much of what I understand about God hasn’t come through things that he said to me, but rather things he has shown to me, when we’re together in times like this. Let me try to show you what I mean.

In my mind’s eye, I could see God standing in a forest, reaching his hand out to me. It was clear that he wanted to go for a walk, and so we went into the woods together, deep. There was nobody else around. He was warm, and whenever he looked at me, he did so with kindness and love. His eyes crinkled at the corners.

Now, under a normal man’s weight, the earth below would crunch and wilt and bend and slump as he walked, but when his bare feet hit the earth, new flowers burst into existence with each step. And were they quietly—singing?

For a while, I asked him to scoop me up into his arms and carry me, so I could rest my head on his chest. With your head on the Maker’s chest, walking in his woods, deep and far away from other voices, it becomes clear that he is orchestrating it all, and that even though he is there on the ground with you, he also has a 360 degree view of everything in the universe. With my head there on his chest, I suddenly had the deep realization, He’s been playing chess while we’ve all been playing checkers.

Eventually, I found myself walking beside him again, though I don’t remember him putting me down. I was aware of the difference between the two of us: I was small and fleshly, while he was positively luminous. I ventured to ask him why he loves me, and he said, without hesitation, “Because I made you.”

Now, we haven’t always got to talk aloud in encounters like these; we’ve got the same Spirit living in each of us (1 Corinthians 3:16), so sometimes he keeps talking to my spirit even though outwardly it looks like we’re walking in quiet communion. The best thing I can equate it to is this: Think of someone you’ve known for a very long time, like your spouse, or your brother, or your best friend. When you are sitting silently together, it is very possible that you know what the other person is thinking, feeling, and wanting without ever having to say a word. This, of course, is an imperfect example, but I do believe it gets the job done.

So after he said that, he reached for my arm and threaded it through his and—from his Spirit to mine—said, “Think of when you make something. Even if it’s small. How proud you are! It’s because it shimmers with something of yourself. When I created you, I intended you. You—you sparkle to me.”

We walked farther, him and I. A part of me understood that we were heading towards water—maybe a brook.

Photo by Lukasz Szmigiel on Unsplash

I told him that I was afraid, and that in this situation, all I could see was billowing, ominous darkness. He said, “I fold darkness back on itself and turn it into light.” I pictured him rolling a swath of darkness over the face of the earth like one rolls up a mat, revealing light underneath. There was a glimmer of—mischief?—in his eyes, and his Spirit said in me, “Remember how I died? I used darkness’ own game against it. It thought it had won, but then I beat it at its own game.” Then he squeezed my arm. “That’s what I do.”

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At some point or other, the world called me back. But now I have these images from our walk in the woods that I can return to, and his Spirit offers them up to my spirit when my brain starts to spin with worry again. He hands these moments up to my mind’s eye and I don’t just see them—I feel them. And I’m back in them for a while.

When I start to see the darkness all around again, there I am again: Head on God’s chest, encircled with light. Warm. Being carried through the forest by capable arms.

And when I start to doubt myself, there I am, seeing the way he looked at me when he told me he loved me because he made me.

And when I feel particularly overwhelmed or terrified, I remember that he already exists in a time and place, too, where everything is all light, all the time, and that I can go there in my spirit whenever I want to look around and be held by him and remember that it’s true—all of it’s true. Death doesn’t have the final say. My God is actively beating it at its own game.

This is how I heard from God, in one encounter.

It’s not always like this. Sometimes I hear from him in answered prayers, seemingly serendipitous moments, from other people’s mouths, from books I am reading, from a slant of light falling across the living room carpet. But I always return to these same principles:

1. Does it reflect God’s character?

2. Is it aligned with what God says to be true in the Bible?

3. And last but not least: Does it bring a sense of shalom (peace and wholeness) to my spirit?

If the answers are yes, yes, and yes, I feel confident that I have heard from God.

And I hope you know that you, too, can hear from him. He wants to talk with you. He doesn’t expect you to be some supernatural super-spirited superpower. He knows you’re just flesh and bones and dust and worries and doubts and questions and dreams. Yet he still placed the ability to understand his native language in your spirit, so that he can communicate with you. Yes—YOU.

If you’ve never tried to hear from God before, I suggest you start here today:

1. Go someplace quiet, without distractions.

2. Sit in silence for 1-2 minutes.

3. Say aloud, “God, I want to hear your voice. Will you help me?”

4. And then close your eyes and be attentive to what you see and hear. Rather than dismissing ideas or images that come into your mind, just be open and curious. You might be surprised what God says or shows you. I know I often am.

5. Afterward, consider writing down what you think you heard from God.

   1. If you aren’t super familiar with the Bible, you can literally Google, “What does the Bible say about [insert what you think you heard from God]?” Does it align with what you heard?

   2. If you’re not sure if it aligns with God’s character, talk to someone who’s been hanging out with him for a longer time than you. Ask them!

   3. Finally, ask yourself: Does what I heard bring a sense of peace and wholeness to my spirit?

6. If the answers are yes, yes, and yes—it seems that you’ve begun to wake up the language of God that’s been lying dormant in your spirit. Keep listening. Keep asking him to talk to you and show you things. You’re well on your way.

   How do YOU usually hear from God? Let me know in the comments!

1. This is a line from Nick from New Girl that we’ve adopted into our own family vernacular.