How to Hear God: A Simple Guide for Normal People

Product Information

Pete Greig: The Bible is not meant to be just “read;” it’s meant to be prayed. In many ways it’s a conversation starter for our prayer lives. One of the great ancient tools that can help us to pray the Bible is the Lectio Divina. In this approach we read small sections of the Bible slowly and we may even repeat them several times. We become attentive to any particular word or phrase that the Holy Spirit seems to be illuminating. And then we turn those words and phrases into prayerful interaction with the Lord. We harness our imaginations to bring the Word to life in our own experience. This is not coming to the Bible as a textbook for sound doctrine (important as that is), but rather coming to it as an invitation for meditation and revelation through conversation with God. God is not silent. However, often we are too busy to hear his voice. How to Hear God is a biblically based, historically illustrated look at the various ways in which God speaks. In reading and reflecting on its message, I have become a better listener. I highly recommend it for anyone who wants a more intimate relationship with God.' Gary D. Chapman The Revd Mike Starkey is Head of Church Growth for Manchester diocese and author of the Stepping Stones for Growth course. More about what story in Scripture Pete says is a master class for anyone seeking to learn to hear God’s 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.

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. Most people insist of hearing God’s voice on their own terms. Perhaps we need a newfound willingness to take counsel from a brother or sister, as a mark of humility and surrender. Sometimes he waits for us to humble ourselves.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). So there’s the Bible. And then they say, “Our hearts burned within us as he spoke to us on the road.” So there’s those times where you just sense God speaking. Maybe it’s a still small voice. And so there’s a whole bunch of ways God clearly speaks in this story. As Pete points out, for followers of Jesus, “hearing [God’s] voice is therefore the most natural thing in the world…but whenever God’s word is confused, abused, or ignored, it can become one of the most perplexing and painful things too.” For many, hearing God’s voice has become confused, abused, and at times even ignored. For this reason, far too often, we assume it is impossible for us to accomplish. This book reminds us that it is essential that we develop and commit to intentional practices and disciplines that help us to rediscover our connection to God the Father, the Creator and sustaining life-force of all of Creation. These practices and disciplines – as well as this book – are good reminders that God’s voice is often missed because it comes different than we want to expect; rather “when it comes, as it mostly does, [it is] in a voice hushed to a “gentle whisper.” Far too many followers of Jesus have never been discipled on or encouraged around how to discern the distinctive voice of God, and this book helps them commit intentionally to spiritual practices and disciplines to discern and respond to the voice of God. Sadly, as Pete points out, even those of us who these practices are not new for, can at times, too easily become “distracted psychologically, emotionally, intellectually, or spiritually” to hear “the voice of God.” For us, the realignment of our spiritual lives is essential, through committing intentionally to spiritual disciplines and practices. This book is certainly an encouragement towards realignment. Many people struggle to hear God because they have been taught to listen for his voice in ways that are difficult or even impossible for them to process. An academic study in the United States discovered a correlation between certain psychological attributes and the way spiritual phenomena are experienced. Certain personality types, it seems, simply find it harder to hear God’s voice than others. This is not helped by the fact that a disproportionate amount of the material on listening to God has been written by introverts (representing approximately 35 per cent of the population), who understandably advocate their own preference for quietness, stillness and solitude. So you’ve got, as it were, the external, objective ways God speaks, and then the more internal subjective ways. I talk about that lovely story of Elijah on the mountain, and God is not in the fire. He’s not in the earthquake. And then God speaks in a still small voice. And so we learn to discern the whisper of God in our lives.

Greig makes it quite clear that the Bible is the language of God’s heart, and therefore if we wish to hear what he is saying, we have to be immersed in the Scriptures. Don't we all want to hear from God? How much easier our lives would be if we could hear his voice and follow his direction. I love Pete's writing because it is easy to understand. The simple way he handles difficult subjects in How to Hear God makes this book compelling. If you really want to grow on this journey of hearing God, here is the book that will help you grow immensely.' senior pastor of Jesus House London Agu Irukwu 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 A lot of people say God has told them something, but then you hear what it is, and it sounds more like a message from the devil. Other folks who don't even believe in God seem to have a word of truth for today. Well, here is a book by someone you can trust. Pete Greig has been a friend for years, and he is one of the wisest people I know when it comes to prayer. This book draws from the well of wisdom that has nourished the faithful for centuries. It is filled with voices of saints who have been not only people of prayer but people who get up off their knees and put feet on those prayers. This incredible book is a call to prayer and a call to action . . . which is exactly what our world needs right now.' Shane Claiborne 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.How we hear God speak is about how our neural pathways have learned to receive and process data, and this varies from person to person 2. THEOLOGICAL

It only takes a minute to create your own Bible Gateway free personal account and you’ll immediately upgrade your Bible Gateway experience. Do it right now!

Your browser is not supported

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). In largely focusing on Lectio as a means of "Hearing God" in scripture there was a tendency to dismiss other means of reading the Bible devotionally, particularly reading larger sections that give us a greater sense of the narrative, and which would have been, in the absence of personal Bibles and chapter and verse, to original way in which scripture would literally have been "heard" rather than the atomised, bite-sized approach that has been the norm of too many evangelical Bible notes, and into which Lectio can easily descend.