Listening

Here are three practical points about hearing God. First, more often that not, you're going to hear His voice in the mess. When external circumstances or soul turmoil are doing a number on you, and you don't have any good feelings to draw on, you will hear his voice. His Spirit speaks directly to your spirit. When nothing in the external, including your soul, validates that, it makes it all the more clear that it's Him speaking.

Second, we can do things to cultivate our ability to hear Him. One is to spend time with Him alone, just listening. I've observed that it's very hard for most Christians to be all alone. We want someone to talk to, because when we're talking we don't have to face ourselves. And when we're talking we don't have to face God. Prayer is listening as well as talking. It's difficult to listen, though. It's challenging to believe that you actually hear. Take time in silence to listen.

The last point I want to make is this: you will do what God prompts you to do. Often when believers learn to trust Christ to live through them they begin to doubt their motives. “How do I know that this isn't just my selfish desire?” they ask. Who is the author of that? At this point we are so close to living a spontaneous, Spirit-directed life that Satan wants to challenge us as to whether we will do what God prompts us to do.

We will. Past experience alone should tell us that. Back when we were trying to live the Christian life from our own effort, we wanted to do what God wanted. We just couldn't, because we hadn't yet learned to live from the Spirit. But our heart's desire was to do His will.

Now that we have learned to live by His inner voice and we aren't striving anymore, we needn't wonder, “Will I really do what God wants me to?” Our inner man is always in agreements with God (Romans 7:22). Since He called us into His kingdom, we have always wanted to do what He wants. Previously, we just didn't know Him in such a way as to let Him do it through us. Now we do. The more we come to know Him and hear Him, the more we will manifest Him through our spontaneous living.— The Rest of the Gospel: When the partial Gospel has worn you out, pages 206-207

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Lots of good stuff here, especially the statement that just listening is hard. Our society blares at us all the time; we need to take the time to turn it off and just listen. Of course, we might have to be face-to-face with some unpleasant realities, so we quickly turn the noise back on...too bad. God is waiting for us to listen; Augustine called the Holy Spirit the "hound of heaven" and he keeps on knocking on our door. He won't quite, praise God!
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