Guest Contributor: Steve Dekkers
For cross-cultural workers, the sentence “I don’t know what to do!” can come up every hour! Away from familiar resources, cultural understandings, and support structures, serving in ministry overseas is a challenge and an opportunity to depend on God. Learning to hear God’s voice is a critical component for thriving and in pioneering ministry. However, many of us feel under-experienced or confused with the topic of listening prayer.
Our guest contributor Steve Dekkers is a missions mobilizer and trainer based in Texas, who is someone we (Steven and Jenn) have greatly benefitted from in learning about prayer and the Holy Spirit. These posts are adapted from a training that Steve has given on listening prayer that is our favorite!
These posts on listening prayer will provide some biblical foundations around the topic of listening prayer, give some different activities to engage in listening, and help you know how to discern God’s voice in your listening.
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Disclaimers
First, I want to start with a disclaimer that there are many different theologies, church backgrounds, and personal experiences. Listening prayer might be a topic that is familiar for some or can range from confusing to unsettling for others. This post is simply an introduction, so my encouragement is to keep pressing in and learning and following up as the Lord leads. Curiosity about this topic has helped drive many people to learn more about listening prayer, and that’s been my journey as well.
This training isn’t meant to try to change your theology. I’ll try to share as much as I can about where I see this in Scripture, but I also acknowledge that a lot of peoples’ perspectives about listening prayer are heavily influenced by their own personal experience, mine included.
If you read this and don’t agree with what is shared, that is OK! My suggestion is to read this with an open mind and allow the Lord to search your heart and see if there’s anything here that will be beneficial to your relationship with Him. Seek out others that practice listening prayer and ask them questions.
Secondly, for those that want to learn more about listening prayer and how God speaks, this is a process. I want to make it very, very safe, especially if you try some of these activities and don’t have a strong sense that you’re hearing anything or get something specific!
It’s completely safe and OK to feel like you didn’t hear something. It takes a lot of faith and boldness to try and listen. But it also takes boldness to say, I didn’t get something even though it kind of feels like you’re supposed to. There’s no shame there because you’ve tried and that’s OK.
Also, it might not be your role for a certain time. Your role might be to receive from someone else that has heard something and shares it with you. That doesn’t mean you don’t have God or you’re not saved. It actually means that God is probably communicating to you in lots of other ways. In listening prayer, it’s OK not to get something.
In our training group where we practice listening prayer, we had a guy named Joe who embraced that. He wasn’t resistant to listening prayer, but He would listen and a lot of times just think of Scripture. And that is also from the Lord!
It’s important to continue seeking and engaging, preferably in a safe place with your community. As you pursue God in this process, I’m confident you will grow in hearing His voice!
The God of the Bible is a God who Speaks
The God of the Bible is a God who speaks.
Before we talk about how to engage in listening prayer, this is something we need to be confident in from Scripture. In Genesis 1, God introduces Himself to all the world as the God who speaks creation into existence. And He continues speaking in all of the pages of the Bible to the very end.
God is a communicating God. There’s some examples like Esther and Ruth where they are just trying to be obedient in the situations they are in and see God at work through that. But there are even more examples like Jonah, Moses, Samuel, David, Philip, Paul, Peter, and many more where they communicate with God pretty directly, through prayer and through the word of the Lord coming through other people. We’ll give a few examples here that include different ways that God communicated to His people.
Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch
In Acts 8, we see God communicating with Philip to evangelize to the Ethiopian eunuch. In verse 26, “an angel of the Lord said to Philip, ‘Rise and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.’” Philip doesn’t even know the purpose of this instruction, he just hears from an angel messenger to go and he obeys.
When he gets to that area on the road to Gaza where the Ethiopian eunuch is traveling, “the Spirit said to Philip, ‘Go over and join this chariot.’ So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’”
Philip’s there by the side of the road, and sees the Ethiopian eunuch who he knows is royalty. Philip hears the Spirit tell him to go near the chariot, and he runs towards it! From anyone’s point of view, Philip looks like a robber. There’s no reason for him to run towards a chariot!
But Philip obeys and RUNS immediately upon hearing the Spirit’s voice. He doesn’t say, “What’s that voice? Was that God? I don’t know if I’ve heard God speak before.” Philips hears and runs to the chariot. He shares the gospel with the eunuch and baptizes him immediately by the side of the road. Church tradition says that this Ethiopian eunuch may have been one of the first to bring the gospel into Africa.
When we are in an unreached place and out on the road and the Spirit tells us to go towards a person that He has prepared to hear the gospel, will we RUN forward in obedience? Will we be able to recognize His voice?
Samuel
We see another example of God communicating clearly with Samuel. At this time, they already have the Torah from Moses. But the early Jews knew that they were supposed to continue to receive the word of the Lord – not to just get the Torah and be done. After Moses, God spoke through prophets to the people of Israel. But 1 Samuel 3:1 says “the word of the Lord was rare in those days, there was no frequent vision,” which must have been really concerning.
Eli is the priest and Samuel is serving as a boy. In this story, the Lord calls out to Samuel but Samuel gets confused and thinks it is Eli calling him. Eli perceives that it’s God calling out to Samuel and encourages him to answer, “Speak, Lord, for your servant hears.”
God gives Samuel a prophecy about Israel. God begins communicating with Samuel directly and “Samuel grew, and the Lord was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground… and the word of Samuel came to all Israel.”
Even when it feels like we haven’t heard God’s voice for a long time, or maybe if we feel like we have never heard God’s voice, He can still start communicating with us at any moment! Can we posture our hearts like Samuel to say – “Speak, Lord, for your servant hears.”
David
Next you have David. Saul is a king that prophesied a few times but he has Samuel as his main connection to hearing the Lord. But David actually starts to operate as a prophet, a priest, and a king!
9 times in 1st and 2nd Samuel it says that David inquires of the LORD. When David inquires, he is specific, and he is obedient. He asks specifically of God, what do you want me to do? Should we go here? Will we have victory? He waits for God’s response and obeys.
The best example of this is in 1 Samuel 30, where David and his men go to battle but return to their city to see that the Amalekites have raided their city and kidnapped all the women and children. David and his men “wept until they had no more strength to weep” and “the people spoke of stoning him, because all the people were bitter in soul, each for his sons and daughters. But David strengthened himself in the Lord” (1 Samuel 30:4, 6).
This is probably one of the hardest points in David’s leadership. But he does something unbelievable here, with his people ready to stone him.
He inquires of the Lord.
Should I pursue, will I overtake them? And God says yes and that he will rescue them.
What else is David supposed to do here except pursue?! The people would’ve certainly stoned him. But David doesn’t do what is obvious, doesn’t do what his followers expect, doesn’t do what he thinks is right – he obeys the Lord after he inquires of the Lord. David is a man after God’s own heart, and he knows God’s heart by communicating with Him.
Cornelius and Peter
In the book of Acts, we see some types of communication from God that are more apostolic in nature. And what I mean by that is the Holy Spirit is guiding the Apostles and disciples to bring the gospel to places it has never gone, because the church is just beginning and spreading.
But later in the Epistles you see words that are more about sanctification in nature. These words are bringing us to look more like Christ, focusing on our union with Christ and oneness with Him.
In Acts 10, we also see a few different ways that God communicates. Cornelius gets a message from an angel to find Peter and tells him exactly where to find him. So he sends three men to find Peter.
At the same time, Peter goes into a trance while he’s really hungry and praying. So that’s maybe how you know you’re doing fasting and prayer well – you’re so hungry that you go into a trance and have a vision!
Peter gets a vision three times about supposedly unclean animals that God says that he can kill and eat. But God says it’s OK. And as Peter is thinking about this vision, the three men are at the gate, and the Holy Spirit tells Peter, “Behold, three men are looking for you. Rise and go down and accompany them without hesitation, for I have sent them.”
So there’s three types of communication just in this short passage – the angel giving a message to Cornelius, Peter receiving the vision from God, and the Holy Spirit literally saying to Peter what he’s supposed to do, to go with the three men. And the rest of the book of Acts is completely transformed by this moment because it opens the door for Gentiles to come into the Kingdom.
Ways that God Speaks
Now we’ve seen several different people in different times hear from God in different ways – visions, angels, prayer, hearing the Spirit’s voice directly, and through prophets and leaders.
In John 10, Jesus says that the sheep hear the Shepherd’s voice and “the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.”
The sheep know the Shepherd’s voice.
So that’s just my word of encouragement to you as you begin to hear God speak. You know your Shepherd’s voice. God is already communicating with you!
The sheep follow him, for they know his voice.
John 10:4
This was my “ah-ha” moment as someone taught me about listening prayer. When you’re praying and certain thoughts, words, Scripture passages, images, songs, visions, impressions, and even emotions enter your mind and heart, that is the Holy Spirit speaking! It really is!
Sometimes when the Spirit is speaking, it might be accompanied by certain emotions like peace or love or joy, or even physical expressions like warmth, waves of tingling moving down your body, goosebumps, or feelings of electricity.
As you hear those things, write them down even if it feels like it’s from left field. Obviously the random distracting thoughts like “what am I going to eat for lunch” or “what’s the score of the game” are probably just your own mind. In part 2 we will talk about a way to quiet your mind to remove distractions and find a place to meet Jesus and hear from him. We’ll also address the more difficult part in discerning whether some things you hear are from your own mind or are from God.
But I want to help you grow to be confident in knowing that it was God who spoke. The more you know and recognize God’s voice, the more you’re going to stand on that rock until He gives you a new word, and continues to communicate with you more and more.
God Speaks to Be With Us
In many of these biblical examples, there’s a lot of instruction from God about what people should do. And that can be a strong motivation for cross-cultural workers as well when they are seeking God’s voice through Scripture and prayer – what am I supposed to do?
It can be really great when God tells you to go do something, and you go do it and it feels like it was exactly right. But a lot of what God tells you in listening prayer will be about your identity because he wants you to be loved and to be in him. He tells you about identity so you can be one with him.
If we read and study Scripture to increase our knowledge but miss out on loving Jesus more, we have missed the point. Jesus says to the Jews in John 5 that “you search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.”
In a similar way, if our only motivation to increase in listening prayer is to receive guidance in what to do or receive just what we need but not to enter into deeper relationship with Jesus, we may also be missing the point.
Throughout his time with the disciples, there is plenty of instruction from Jesus to the disciples about what they are supposed to do. But in Jesus’ final words to the disciples, he says that he no longer calls them servants but friends. In his final prayer for the disciples in John 17, he prays for our unity, our joy, our sanctification, our perseverance, and ultimately that we would know Jesus in the Father. “I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
It was a journey for the disciples to grow in their relationship with Jesus, and it’s a journey for each of us to grow in further maturity in our relationship with Jesus and that’s OK. Our prayer lives start with being like toddlers – “Look at me!” And we’re the ones talking and talking and talking at Jesus. Then it goes to being like a teenager believer, who is like, “I need this, I need that.” Eventually we get to the point of more maturity where we are experiencing oneness with Jesus. Where we’re in tune with him, we’re interacting and communicating with him. We don’t only ask for things or even ask what we’re supposed to do, but we ask him about his heart, about his desires, about what he wants us to know about ourselves.
For sure, it pleases God when we hear and obey his voice. But let our motivations to hear his voice mirror his heart, “that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
Questions for Reflection
- What hesitations or doubts do you have about listening prayer? Offer those to God and ask Him to speak to you.
- What are other stories in the Bible where God communicates? Do you believe He could communicate with you in those ways? Why or why not?
- Have you ever felt like the Holy Spirit was speaking? What method did it come by (image, emotion, words)? What happened after hearing from God?
- What is your motivation for increasing in listening prayer? Ask God to help you align your heart to His in seeking His voice.