God is Speaking to You....A Lot. But How Do You Listen? Here's How

I gotta admit.  I felt pretty anxious, even a bit scared.  I’d never traveled alone to another country.  Granted, I had gone the safe route, a country that at least spoke my language.  Still that first morning in London, bleary-eyed and sleepless, sitting on my bunk in a cheap hostel, I felt very much alone. 

I feared I had made a big mistake.  Desperately, I said. “God, help me to know you’re with me, that I’m not alone.”  Then suddenly, I had this sense.  You need to get moving now and go to the British Museum.  So, off I went, grabbing breakfast at a café along the way.   And then sitting at that café, again I had a sense.  You need to leave right now for the museum.  So, I did.

I remember walking through the massive gates into the courtyard that led to the entrance.  Hundreds of people were coming in or going out.   But as I walked up the stairs, I glanced to my right and my jaw dropped.  I thought.  I know that guy.   We traveled together in the States years ago.    Again, I had a sense.  Go over and say hello.  I hesitated.  But then I thought.  Nobody knows me here.  What do I got to lose?    And indeed, I did know him.  He had dropped by the museum for a moment to say goodbye to a friend.  Now he and another friend, both art history students, were off to a museum called the Wallace Collection.  He suggested.  “Why don’t you join us.”  So, I did, and I had an awesome day.

But get this.  That friend I met didn’t even live in London.  He lived in Glasgow, Scotland.  He had only come down a few days for a brief visit.  Think about it, in London, one of the largest cities in the world, I meet this friend who lives in a part of Britain hundreds of miles away.  And if I had not been to the museum at just that time, if I had been off by only a minute or two, I would never have seen him at all.  But all along the way, I realized.   God had been prodding, moving me to just this encounter.  And for whatever reason, that day, I had been willing to listen.

Here’s the profound truth.  God is speaking to you more than you would ever think.  And if you develop the ears to hear, who knows what wonders, what amazing opportunities God will open.  Again and again, I’ve experienced just such moments.   A few months ago, I sensed that I needed to talk about Jerry Gensel, a beloved leader of this church, now with God, on the labyrinth.   I had no idea that day was Jerry’s birthday, but God did.   But how do you hear God’s voice?  How do you know it’s God and not just a bad burrito from the night before?  In these words, God points the way.  Let’s listen and hear what God has to say.    

I Kings 19:11-13

God is speaking, and a lot more times than you realize, God is speaking to you.  But how do you know?  After all, our world has all sorts of folks saying they heard from God.   Yet when you hear what God told them, you can think. Really?   That doesn’t sound like God to me.  I like that quote by the great women’s rights pioneer Susan B. Anthony.  She said it well when she said: “I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I know it always coincides with their own desires.”   

So, if God is speaking to you, how do you know it’s God?   Here God tells you.  God says.  You learn to recognize my voice.   Do you remember those days before our phones told us who was calling?   You’d pick up the phone, and you’d have no idea who was going to be on the other end, that is, until you heard their voice.    Most of the time, if it was someone you knew, you’d say, “Well, hello Bob or Jane or whoever.”   And maybe the other person, surprised, would say.  “How’d you know it was me?”   And you’d say.   “I recognized your voice.”  

After all, that’s what happens here.  Elijah had spent a lifetime listening to God’s voice, heck, Elijah was listening to God’s voice right before the earthquake, fire and wind came.   So, when they did, Elijah knew.   These demonstrations of power looked impressive, but none of them carried God’s voice.    And in those verses, God gives you an important clue on how God’s voice comes.   It rarely comes loudly or with force, but instead quietly, so quietly, it might even come as silence itself.  That’s why the silent listening that I talked about last week has such power.

But God doesn’t only give you this one clue to recognize God’s voice.   The whole Bible gives you those clues.  But here’s the problem.   You can read the Bible without listening to it.  

Have you ever been talking to someone, and you realized.  Holy Moley, they’re not listening to me at all.   They’re not hearing anything I’m trying to tell them.    Or naybe you were the one not listening.   It’s not like that you didn’t intend to not listen.  But life gets distracting. You get preoccupied.   And that happens when it comes to the Bible.

That’s why as part of prayer, Christians for centuries, have practiced a way of reading the Bible that helps you really listen to what God is saying there.   It works like this.  You pick a passage of scripture, usually not a very long one.  And as you read it, you ask yourself one simple question.   What word or phrase is resonating with me here?   Once you ask that question, you read the passage again, and maybe yet again.   Each time, you ask that question.  Is there some word or phrase here that particularly resonates with me?  And then you ask yourself why.

Now when you ask those questions, you’re listening not only to God but to yourself.   And as you do that listening, as you ask those questions, you’ll discover.  Something in that passage is rising up for you.    Maybe it’s because you don’t understand it or because it comforts you.   Maybe you’re not really sure why it is catching your eye, just that it is.    But here’s the crucial point.  In that sort of reflective reading, God is speaking to you. Even if you don’t even know exactly what God is saying, trust me, God is speaking. 

Often, when I’ve practiced this sort of listening to the Bible, I’ve written down a phrase or word that honestly made no sense to me at the time.  But then later that day, I found myself in a situation where that very word or phrase gave me the insight I needed.   Or sometimes, I only realized it after the fact.   After I’d messed up the situation, I’d remember the word or phrase.  And I go.  “Oh, that’s why I noticed that.   Gosh, I wished I’d remembered that an hour ago!”  

But God in this attentive reading isn’t simply interested in giving you an insight for that day.  Heck, lots of days, you’ll have no clue why that phrase connected with you.  No, in this attentive reading, God is training you to recognize God’s voice.  And as God does, when God speaks, not only will you recognize it, but more crucially you’ll grow to trust it.  

So many times, I’ve had moments when I got this sense that I needed to call this person, to reach out to them.  And every time I listened and let that sense lead me, I discovered.  That person was facing a challenge or hardship about which I knew nothing.  Sometimes, they even said.  “How did you know?”  And I told them.   I didn’t, but God did.   I just simply listened.

When I was in seminary, I interned at a church in Nashville, TN.   One of the elders in that church, Andy Spickard, served as a doctor at the Vanderbilt Medical Center.   One day, I happened to be visiting patients from the church there.   Over the course of an hour, I saw Dr. Spickard three times.  And after the third time, he said to me.  In this huge hospital, for us to see each other three times, that’s no coincidence.  God wants us to meet.  And in the midst of his busy day, he took 15 minutes to sit with me.  And here’s the thing. I needed those 15 minutes and the counsel he provided me in them desperately.   It has been 35 years, and I am still grateful for the fact that, when God spoke, he was willing to listen and respond.

Now, when this sort of thing happens, it might seem like an ordinary thought, a whim, so how do you know it’s God?   Well, two questions, ones lifted up by the writer Pete Grieg, help.  You ask yourself first.  Would this be the sort of thing Jesus would do?   And second, you ask.  What’s the worst that could happen if I get this wrong?   If it would be a disaster if you got it wrong, it’s best to hit pause and pray.  For example, if you feel God is leading you to give someone a good tongue-lashing or tell them to quit their job, you better be darn sure that’s from God. 

But taking those questions into account, when you obey that whim, trust that instinct, you’ll discover God is speaking, often in ways so specific you’ll never forget them.  In Pete Grieg’s life, that happened when he got stranded in Chicago.  All the planes heading in his direction had gotten grounded due to a volcanic eruption in Iceland.  So, until they flew, he had to find somewhere to go.  Now, even though he had friends closer, he found himself thinking about a friend 150 miles away in Wisconsin.  So, he emailed him and asked.   “Hey, can I crash on your couch?”    Yet even as he emailed, Pete’s friend had just received terrible news.  And his worried wife had asked him.  “Who do you wish you had on your couch right now?”   His friend replied, “Gosh, I wish it was Pete, but that’s crazy.  He’s in England. He’s never even been to our home.”   Yet within hours of his comment, God had answered that prayer that his friend didn’t even realize was a prayer.  And it all happened because when God spoke, Pete listened.

Now sometimes, God will speak in a far simpler way than that. Years ago, my friend, Calvin invited me to lunch.   At that time, I was struggling with some issues surrounding my family.  As I laid out the problem, Calvin, a fellow pastor, simply said.  “Kennedy, God always wants you to put your family first.”   Well, simple yet wise words were exactly what I needed to hear.    

And yes, sometimes God will speak in ways no one else can.  Roger and Donna, a couple that live in Tulsa, Oklahoma know that all too well.  Many years ago, a sadly neglected baby named Anthony came into their life.   But they soon discovered that, Rhonda, little Anthony’s mother had disappeared without completing the papers to surrender her parental rights.  All they knew is that Rhonda had gone 100 miles west to Oklahoma City.   So, one Sunday morning, Roger, armed with a handful of flyers, made a desperate attempt to find Rhonda in that city of 1.4 million people.   As he drove into Oklahoma City, he asked God to guide him at every corner, at every red light.   And in that tenuous way, he came to this little white mission church in a rough part of town.  As he arrived, the service had ended. Folks were lining up for the meal afterwards.  He asked one of the cooks, showed her the flier.  She simply shrugged and said: “Go ask the pastor.”   The pastor looked at the picture, paused, and said: “Yes, I know her.”   That very hour, they met Rhonda, and she signed the paperwork that enabled Anthony to become Roger and Donna’s son.    Somehow within thirty minutes of driving into the city, he had come to the right man at the right address at exactly the right time, just as that church was emptying.  When God speaks, and you listen, there is no limit to what God can do.

So listen.  For when God speaks, and you listen, who know how God's words will wondrously touch and change your life?