Over these last few months, I’ve talked with many of you about what it means to hear from God. I have learned quite a bit from y’all, and after a while I summarized some of the wisdom in one place where I could refer to it easily. This morning, I thought it would be good to offer it back to y’all.

Where has God been in teaching me all of this? I honestly don’t know… but that’s something that I am learning… I am learning to become more comfortable with not knowing where God is at work, and simply trusting that God is at work. For now, I’ll just repeat a few lines from Mere Christianity. Not because I am sure that they are completely right either, but maybe they help us to see the truth a bit more clearly:

“You may say `I’ve never had the sense of being helped by an invisible Christ, but I often have been helped by other human beings.’ That is rather like the woman in the first war who said that if there were a bread shortage it would not bother her house because they always ate toast. If there is no bread there will be no toast. If there were no help from Christ, there would be no help from other human beings.” – C.S. Lewis

(Or again, the same point from a very young Jaden Smith https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMw3Mo6aLxI )

• God is the one speaking. You do not make it happen. You have to remember to let it come entirely from God’s side… you have to let go of your desire to control it, to make it happen, to make God speak to you. – Aubrie Custred
• Remember, first, that God has told you who you are. You are dearly beloved, God’s precious child. Don’t forget that. At first glance, it seems irrelevant to the question of what to do, but you will be surprised by how much clarity about what to do can come from simply knowing who you are. – Dad
• Do not sit there patiently waiting for God to speak. Do something called active listening, where you take a few steps down some paths that God might be leading you down. – David Goolsby
• Concerning each possible path, pray this prayer each day, “Lord, if this way is the way that is best, let it grow. If not, let it fall away.” – David Goolsby
• When God seems to be leading you down a certain path, pray this prayer, “God, if you are creating this opportunity for me to love my neighbor as myself, I thank you so much. But God, if there is anything about the path that I am walking that makes you hesitate to lead me farther down this path, I want to become aware of it and let those things go.” – this came out of a spiritual direction conversation with Matt Johnson
• Where can I serve that others cannot and does that match my gifts and call? In the end you should be called by the needs of others and match them to your gifts. You will find multiple places where this is the case and at the end of the day just take some time and space to pray and meditate with your distilled questions in front of you. – Eric Soard
• Think of God like a little cat. Every day, it comes to your door, and meows, and wants to come in. You can choose to let her in or not, just as you can choose to listen to God’s voice or not. The cat isn’t overbearing or demanding… it just wants to be with you. It wants this badly enough that it will keep coming over and over again, even if you keep slamming the door over and over again. – Emily Clark shared this with me; she said she got it from Anne Lamott
• Ask yourself what God might be saying, and comb back over it, asking yourself where you have added your own assumptions to the bare bones of what God is saying. Remove the assumptions, and then simply look at the actual things that God might be saying. – Don Woolley
• When I ask, “What is God saying?”, I get everything imaginable. When God has spoken to me, it has been calm and direct, and I have no doubt that it is the voice of God. It comes when God speaks, not when I ask for it. It surprises me.
• We get this idea that God’s voice is so easy to miss, we act like God is trying to be elusive… we forget that God really, really wants us to hear.
• God may sometimes call us to things that are very hard for us. Generally speaking, though, God’s calling is in line with our desires, making use of our desires, not contrary to our desires. God may call us to something that we don’t like the idea of, attempting to draw out a desire that we already have but may be ignoring, suppressing, or didn’t realize how it could be used. – these past three came from Justin Hancock

The title means “The voice of God”. I really appreciate y’all helping me to wrestle with this.