How to Hear God: A Simple Guide for Normal People

Product Information

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 helpful. paetynn. And I know that you’ve shared in the book and elsewhere that this is something that can be developed over time, this idea of how do we sit before God? How do we engage with God and hear from God. And in fact, Pete, you and I were together in Orlando, just a handful weeks ago, we were about 2000 other people. So you didn’t know we were together. But we were in the same room at the exponential conference. And you spoke on this topic, but you didn’t just speak on the topic. Because as you’re kind of coming to the close of your time, you invited all of us to engage right in this whole idea of, of hearing from God. And I remember, I mean, I turned to a gentleman next to me that I’ve never met before in my life. And we introduced ourselves to one another. We, you know, talked, we sought God on behalf of one another, you know, I mean, and prayed over one another, shared, shared a word with one another. And I’ve got to tell you, it was a little, little odd initially, right? Because it was like, okay, you know, we’re gonna, but hey, there are a couple of 1000 other people doing it, too. So, you know, we’re able to dive in. And it was encouraging. But I’ve got to tell you that I I don’t feel I didn’t sense from from this other guy’s reaction, that I somehow dropped the missing puzzle piece into his life. And there was a massive revelation. Right? And he was encouraged. And so talk to us a little bit Pete about as we are seeking to hear from God, both for ourselves and on behalf of others. How do we how do we best kind of manage expectations of kind of what God is doing in that moment? Where we are because I for me personally going through that experience, which I’m very much appreciate and reading through your book. This is one of those those questions that I know for me personally and others. It’s something We’re trying to wrap our mind and our hearts around. These are not gifts that have died out in the church. They have not been “replaced” by the Bible. We weigh prophecy against Scripture, but the Bible itself teaches us that prophecy is a gift of the Holy Spirit for all Christians essential for the building up of the church. In How to Hear God I give some important guidelines as to how we can hear God in this way and how we can handle this gift appropriately (because tragically it has often been abused). The Revd Mike Starkey is Head of Church Growth for Manchester diocese and author of the Stepping Stones for Growth course. Full-Text Transcript How can we experience the work of the Spirit fully in our lives and hear God’s voice?

What are my thoughts about prophecy as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians? Where do I see edification and encouragement through prophecy showing up in my life and ministry? Where is it showing up in our church? You even forget that it’s about studying the Bible. The Bible has connected you directly with God. That’s contemplation. And that might sound scary, and big, and for super-spiritual people, but it’s actually really, really simple. And in the book, I explain how to do it. As one who is called to make disciples, how am I helping those I am discipling become people who really know how to hear God’s voice? The driver who’d seen my thumb and swung into the lay-by offered to take me all the way from Bordeaux to Paris. For a hitchhiker, this is a dream-ride and I settled in for a long journey discussing the pen of my aunt and the price of local cheese in my best schoolboy French. It all seemed to be going rather well until our conversation turned towards homoeopathy and the geology of Scotland (a country my driver apparently loves).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. What are your thoughts on the ABC approach that Pete shares? How does this relate to following Jesus and creating space for God to speak? But if this is starting to sound a bit onerous, please don’t worry. As usual, Jesus keeps the whole thing refreshingly earthy, relational and simple: “My sheep listen to my voice”, he says. “I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27). 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.

So, let me suggest three practical pointers, drawn from my book How to Hear God, to help you grow in your ability to discern the voice of God: 1. God’s Word in the Bible So, yeah, it’s about reading slowly. It’s about reverence for the text. It’s about using your imagination. It’s about turning the Bible from being a picture frame to a window frame. Okay? So too often we look at the Bible like a picture that you study and analyze. It’s fixed. It’s there in the picture frame. But what if instead we treat the Bible like a window frame? So through the Bible, we kind of open the window and look out on the world.

Church Times/Canterbury Press:

There is no aspect of God’s creation through which he cannot and does not speak. We must learn to discern the voice of God in the whole of life, not just in religious contexts. We must learn to listen more carefully to those people our culture ignores, because God speaks most consistently from the margins – through children, through the poor, through those who suffer. Prayer Movement – Founded by Pete Greig, 24-7 Prayer is an international, interdenominational movement of prayer, mission and justice; a non-stop prayer meeting that has continued for every minute of this century so far, in over half the countries on Earth One of the many problems with this view is that it disregards the fact that people can, and do, misunderstand and misapply the Bible just as much as any other means of divine communication. It also ignores the fact that the Bible itself teaches us to expect God to speak in ways outside of the Bible! Dispensationalism only really makes sense in the absence of miracles, which leads me to the third problem I had with hearing from God… 3. EXPERIENTIAL One of the most astounding yet possibly confusing acts we can do is enjoy a real, conversational relationship with God, the very creator and sustainer of life itself. How should we be hearing his voice? How can we listen to God more clearly amid the clatter and clamor of daily living? What does the Bible mean when it describes God as having a “still, small voice”?

In his latest book, he offers insight and tools to help turn your ordinary, everyday prayers into a real, conversational relationship with the God who is speaking, more than you know. 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. John Mark Comer points out in the forward of this book, that Pete and the book have been able to bridge, or gone beyond the boundaries of the “Christian tribalism of our day – charismatic/noncharismatic/Reformed/Weslyan/Angelican/Anabaptist/conservative/progressive/etc, etc.” I’d agree with that comment from Comer, and I agree with Comer that Pete – through this book - is deeply rooting us in “something far more ancient.” This book certainly covers the need for deepened spiritual formation, how to hear God, and it empowers the reader with practices and disciplines that will create a “real, conversational relationship with God.”And do you know what? The real aim of this book isn’t just to teach people how to hear God in religious contexts, like prayer and Bible study, important as those things are. What happens when we start to hear God in all of creation? Like when we switch on the normal radio? When we go for a walk? When we talk to a non-Christian who doesn’t believe God exists, and yet we start to hear God in what they’re saying? That’s when one day the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. That’s what it says in Habakkuk (2:14). And so when we learn to hear God in all of life, we begin to walk and talk through life like Adam and Eve with God in the garden of Eden. We have a living conversational relationship with him. And so I think the whisper of God is there at the movies, there at the shopping mall, there in the Netflix series, there in the conversation at the water cooler if we have ears to hear.

Exploring the story of Christ's playful, poignant conversation on the road to Emmaus after his resurrection, Pete draws deeply from the insights of a wide range of Christian traditions; weaving together the evangelical emphasis on hearing God in the Bible, and the charismatic commitment to hearing God in the prophetic, with the contemplative understanding of God's "still, small voice" within. Nothing could possibly matter more than learning to discern the authentic voice of God, but few things in life are more susceptible to delusion and deception. When life falls apart and we need God's comfort; in moments of cultural turmoil when we need God's clarity; facing formidable decisions when we need God's guidance; desiring a deeper faith when we need God to say something, anything, to turn the monologue we call prayer into a genuine conversation.

Eventually, he drew a deep breath and cleared his throat. ‘ Zee Anglais,’ he said, ‘are zee worst speakers of ma language in zee world…’. He paused to let his words sink in. ‘And you, mon ami, are zee worst Englishman I ‘av ever heard speaking ma language.’ 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.