How to Hear God: A Simple Guide for Normal People

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The Lectio Course focuses primarily on learning to hear God’s voice through lectio divina, an ancient way of reading the Bible. Expand your Bible reading experience using our valuable library of more than 50 top resources by becoming a member of Bible Gateway Plus. He breaks things down into simple steps so as to be able to actually put things into practice, yet he does it by engaging our imagination and wonder.

Centering the Bible story of a couple encountering Jesus on the Emmaus Road without realizing it’s him (Luke 24), this book illustrates the struggle to recognize God in our own lives. So it’s like, as we get to know the acoustics of God’s voice, the nuance, the tone of God’s voice, we’re like sheep that follow him and then obey, and we grow in our relationship with him.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. The Revd Mike Starkey is Head of Church Growth for Manchester diocese and author of the Stepping Stones for Growth course. In this approach we read small sections of the Bible slowly and we may even repeat them several times. An academic study in the United States discovered a correlation between certain psychological attributes and the way spiritual phenomena are experienced. You may remember Pete from Episode 71 of this podcast, when we talked with him about a simple guide for how to pray.

You know, when I said John 10:27, “My sheep listen to my voice,” the Greek word, there is akouo, from which we get the word acoustic. As a book, this is a simple read, but this is not a negative on the book, but rather it corresponds well to readers who may be new to the faith, new to spiritual disciplines – or are emerging form foundational programs such as Alpha. 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.

The sections on dreams and the unconscious offer practical guidelines which come over as helpful and balanced. Examples are drawn from a wide range of sources: from St Ignatius of Loyola to the prophetic Pentecostal missionary Heidi Baker. Exploring the story of Christ's playful, poignant conversation on the road to Emmaus, Pete draws deeply from the insights of a wide range of Christian traditions.

Pete Greig: Nothing could possibly matter more than learning to discern the voice of God, but few things in life are more susceptible to delusion and deception. Greig has once again produced an engaging book on an important element of Christian discipleship, drawing on sources from across the denominational/theological/historical spectrum.When we talk to a non-Christian who doesn’t believe God exists, and yet we start to hear God in what they’re saying? He heads up Emmaus Rd in Guildford with his wife Sammy, serves as Vice-President for the NGO Tearfund and was part of the senior leadership team at HTB in London for seven years.

Each year, I host a few small groups in our homeless shelter, utilizing the Prayer Course and Unanswered Prayer Course video series put together by Pete Greig and 24-7 Prayer Movement. The more we say ‘yes’ to Jesus, the more familiar and precious his voice becomes – and in time we will be able to say, like Cleopas, ‘ Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked?

T. Wright says of the Emmaus road story, “Learn to live inside this story and you will find it inexhaustible. We also hear his voice through the discipline of prayer, which is of course a two-way communication. Fellow Author, Shane Claiborne, comments similarly, saying that “this book draws from the well of wisdom that has nourished the faithful for centuries. The section on Lectio was particularly helpful, indeed I started to read this because of the parallel "Lectio Course" which we studied as a church group throughout Lent. Some people, and I’ve been doing interviews like this, if they’re really, really into the Bible, they sometimes get really nervous that I talk about God speaking in prophecy.