Hearing from God: 5 Steps to Knowing His Will for Your Life

PART ONE

CONTACT

There is a great sci-fi movie that came out in 1997 called Contact. Based on a Carl Sagan novel by the same name, the movie follows the main character, Ellie Arroway, from childhood to her career as a research scientist with the SETI program (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). The preteen Ellie—later Dr. Arroway—has an insatiable desire to make contact with the outside world. What starts as reaching outside of her childhood home through a CB radio develops into a life devoted to searching for life outside our solar system.

In the opening scenes of the movie, Ellie excitedly makes contact on her CB radio with someone in Florida, which leads to questions about the possibility of making contact with the different stars she views through her telescope. Eventually, as an adult, her search for contact from worlds beyond pays off, as she receives a series of communications from the distant star Vega.

One of the most gripping scenes takes place early in the movie after Ellie’s father dies. In the midst of the tragedy, while family and friends are downstairs socializing after the funeral, Ellie is up in her bedroom, seated in front of the CB radio, attempting to make contact: Dad, are you there? This is Ellie. Dad, are you there?

I called this book Hearing from God: 5 Steps to Knowing His Will for Your Life because I believe, as humans, we all want to make contact with our Heavenly Father and hear and recognize His voice. We want to know what He has to say to us personally and know what His will is for us. Many of the world’s religions are like Ellie’s CB radio, where we call out to God as she called out to her father, Are you there? We all hope that perhaps we will get some kind of reply—an assurance that He exists and is somehow interested in our lives—even if it’s only a scratchy, faint hum.

As believers I am convinced that God wants to make contact with us even more than we want to hear from Him. Instead of a faint, indistinguishable hum, He wants to speak clearly to His people. As Jeremiah 33:3 says, Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.

God speaking to us is meant to be a normal part of our daily lives. Unfortunately, it can seem too time-consuming, inaccessible, inconceivable, or downright frustrating for many. According to a recent study by George Barna, more than 80 percent of Americans pray during a typical week, but only 38 percent are certain that Jesus talks back to them in a personal and relevant way, while an additional 21 percent are only somewhat certain that God speaks to them personally.1

The most common question I am asked as a pastor is, How do I hear from God? There is so much confusion, uncertainty, and ambiguity related to this subject, but I believe God wants to bring clarity so that conversational intimacy can be developed between Him and any believer. John 10:27 expresses that thought clearly: My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. This is an invitation for all believers to listen to and hear God’s voice.

The longer I have walked in a relationship with God, the more confident I have become that He wants to make contact, speaking specifically and frequently to each of us. So if He wants to speak and we want to hear, the million-dollar question is how do we position our lives to make that contact and hear clearly from God? As a pastor, I fully understand how difficult this can be, and there have been times in my life (which I will share in this book) where I missed God’s voice in important ways. However, I have learned invaluable truths and practical applications that have absolutely revolutionized my walk with God and my ability to hear from Him. I have also found that the biggest hindrance to hearing from God is me—not God.

So many believers either do not believe they have enough significance, let alone a significant role to play, in hearing from God, or they don’t understand what they can do to recognize His voice. Instead, they buy into the lie that God is not personal—He doesn’t speak to them directly—or that there’s something wrong with them that keeps them from making contact.

The reality for most believers is that they just need some coaching on how they can position themselves to hear from Him and on how to recognize His voice. There is a concept I call the ministry of Eli. Eli was High Priest in the Jewish temple and was instrumental in helping the young boy Samuel (who later became a prophet) recognize the voice of God speaking to him (1 Samuel 3:1–10). I want this book to become like the ministry of Eli to you. I have benefited greatly from being coached in this area by other pastors, mentors, and friends, and I am excited to share with you what I have learned along the way.

I am confident that as you put into practice what I teach in this book, you, too, will make contact and hear Him. If you already hear from God, I believe this book will help you grow in your ability to hear His voice even more clearly and become even more grounded in your relationship with Him. As new challenges arise where God is calling you to step out in faith, you will be more prepared because your ear is attuned to what He is saying and you can recall His faithfulness through previous challenges to give you confidence to step out again. You’ll find that the more God speaks to you and guides you, the more you’ll be faced with. The enemy will do his best to distract you as well. Because of this, you can never be too grounded in this process.

The Practical Science

Science has been described as God allowing man to discover the secret workings of His incredible creation. For Dr. Arroway, although the search was not based on a faith in God, it was based on discovering whatever was out there in the unknown universe. I believe God wants to help man discover not only the secret workings of His natural creation, but also the secret workings of His supernatural realm, including hearing His voice. The term practical science is defined as the discipline of applying specific knowledge to practical problems. It is the synthesis of these two concepts that coveys the heart of this book.

Hearing from God is written to help believers discover and apply specific knowledge to the practical dilemma of wanting to hear clearly from God so that we can experience more depth in our relationship with Him. Although hearing from God cannot be reduced to an exact science in the typical connotation of the word, I believe there are specific action steps to take and important components we need to include in the formula of our lives to increase our propensity and frequency of hearing from Him. We live in the natural realm, but as believers we are also called to seek out the supernatural realm through a vibrant relationship with the living God. So how do we put this into practice?

The Scientific Method

Do you remember the scientific method from high school or college days? Since I am causing many of you to dig deep into the recesses of your mind, let me give you a little refresher. For those of you who are not science minded, please hang in there with me. I promise this will be simple and even intriguing.

The scientific method is a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. It includes the following six steps:

• Step One: Ask a Question

• Step Two: Do Background Research

• Step Three: Construct a Hypothesis

• Step Four: Test Your Hypothesis by Doing an Experiment

• Step Five: Analyze Your Data and Draw a Conclusion

• Step Six: Communicate Your Results

Although it is not a perfect correlation, when we apply the scientific method to hearing the voice of God, we come up with the following:

We ask God a question or questions, creating space and time in our lives to hear from Him (Step One).

We do background research, taking our question(s) and researching what the Word of God, the Bible, says about the topic (Step Two).

Listening for His voice and researching the Word of God should lead us to a hypothesis of what we believe God is speaking to us (Step Three).

We share what we believe God is speaking to us with trusted friends or counselors—testing to see if they confirm what we are hearing (Step Four).

We analyze what we have heard through His voice, His Word, His counsel through others, and see if our conclusion is confirmed by His peace (Step Five).

Finally, we tell others of what we have learned through this process and of what God has done in our lives (Step Six).

The Experiment

God invites each one of us to know His thoughts. Amos 3:7 says, Surely the Lord God does nothing, unless He reveals His secret to His servants.2 God wants to reveal His secrets to us, but we must seek Him. So, as you read through the chapters of this book, I invite you to participate in an experiment. A scientific supernatural experiment of sorts, which I am confident will help you grow exponentially in being able to hear and discern God’s voice.

My challenge to you is to spend thirty minutes a day with God for forty days, intentionally positioning yourself to hear from Him. Thirty minutes is a good starting point, and I believe that as you begin to encounter God in prayer and His Word, your thirty minutes will soon turn into forty minutes or more. Thirty minutes a day of prayer, study, and allowing God’s Word to bring transformation can lead to a radically changed life.

There is detailed guidance on how to position yourself to hear from God in part 3 of this book (The Experiment—a 40-Day Guide to Hearing God’s Voice). To help you effectively spend your thirty minutes with God and increase your receptivity to hear from—and make contact with—Him, I unpack the five-step process I recommend for your devotional time:

• Step One: Pick a Time and a Place to Meet with God

• Step Two: Be Still and Worship

• Step Three: Read and Pray

• Step Four: Listen and Write

• Step Five: Share and Obey

The 40-Day Challenge includes forty daily Bible passages to study, a format to follow to help you in your time with Him, and space to journal and record what you are learning and hearing.

The theologian Frank Laubach stated, Before a scientist tries an experiment, he must have faith in the work of those who already have reported success.3 This book is a combination of what I have learned from walking with God, listening to Him, and gleaning from the wisdom and experience of others who have gone before me.

I believe that this book could change your life, but it won’t happen without an intentional investment on your part. Will you say yes and commit to the experiment of spending thirty minutes a day, for forty days, seeking Him? As you take this step toward God and position yourself to hear from Him, He will come. Just as He said to the Israelites in Exodus 29:42, I will meet with you and speak with you.4 Get ready!

The Science-Loving, Want-To-Be Inventor

As a child, I was one of those quintessential science-loving, want-to-be inventors that wanted to compete in every science fair and had a certain obsession with creating something I could patent. My dream vacation was a trip to the Smithsonian Air and Space and Natural Science Museum in Washington, D.C. It was there that I felt like I found my people and realized I was not alone in my passion to discover.

That trip was a catalyst that fueled my desire to explore and discover. If I was going to be the next Einstein or Edison, I figured I’d better start learning to split atoms and create something that would revolutionize society. Okay, maybe not splitting atoms, but I felt inspired to dive headfirst into the world of science.

During those elementary years, it probably did not help my social status that I spent my free time reading science books and dreaming up what my next invention would be. I don’t like to brag, but I will tell you that I entered six different science fairs and came home with more than my fair share of prizes. In fact, one year I won first prize in the school and an honorable mention in the regionals.

As a junior mad scientist, I had one experiment go wrong . . . very wrong. It all started innocently enough on Christmas morning of my sixth grade year when I received the best present EVER. To me, it was the magnum opus of all Christmas gifts: my very own genuine chemistry set. Other boys my age were asking for autographed footballs, a new leather bomber jacket, or cassette tapes of Guns N’ Roses, but who would want such frivolous items when you could have beakers and potent chemicals to mix together?

Upon receipt of the gift, I rushed upstairs to my room that was perfectly sequestered from the rest of the house to mix up some concoctions without any interruptions from my parents. The chemistry set came with a plethora of different chemicals, different-sized beakers, and an instruction book.

As I was the type of kid who never did anything by the book, I think it is fair to say that the instruction manual was probably never even opened. I mean who needs instruction manuals when you have chemicals, beakers, and a mad-scientist mind?

In the confines of my private laboratory (aka my bathroom), I began to mix different chemicals together. Each time I watched with awe and excitement, wondering what would happen next. Sometimes the different concoctions would voraciously bubble out of the beaker, and other times they would change colors right before my eyes, but nothing had prepared me for the concoction that accidentally turned my beaker into a flying rocket.

I am still not quite sure what I mixed together or why it suddenly turned explosive. All I remember is pouring in the last chemical and the beaker shooting out of my hand and hitting the ceiling. To my horror, I noticed a burning smell and an atrocious stain discoloring the ceiling. I somehow managed to avoid ever telling my parents, because later that same year they decided to have the bathroom painted a different color and the painters painted over the stain without my parents ever seeing. (Sorry. If you are reading this, Mom and Dad . . . please forgive me). Sometime later, after we had moved out of that house, it burned down. I couldn’t help wondering if there was a connection to the chemicals on the ceiling from my science experiment gone awry.

Obviously, I can’t say all my experiments were successful, but my obsession with science, and discovering why and how things in the natural world worked, continued for the rest of my middle school years. I was a committed explorer of the natural world until I had my first encounter with the supernatural on what was to be my, well, my deathbed.

The Vision, The Word, and The Healing

I will never forget the day I was diagnosed with terminal cancer. As a fifteen-year-old given only six weeks to live, I was petrified, confused, and in disbelief all at the same time. It was a game-changing moment in my life.

The first sign of sickness came during a tennis match at age fourteen. All of a sudden, in the middle of the match, I doubled over in pain and began regurgitating a water-like substance. I visited a myriad of doctors over the next year who tried to find a diagnosis for the painful symptoms I was experiencing. The doctors were baffled as to the cause, but the frequency of the incidents continued to increase until they were happening daily, even sometimes hourly, by the time I turned fifteen.

By this point, I had dropped in weight from 165 pounds to 110, and although we did not know what was wrong with me, we knew it was serious. At the age when most boys are thinking about school dances, sports, and learning to drive, I entered The Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans for two weeks of intense tests and an examination by a panel of at least twenty different doctors.

After a series of tests—including a liver biopsy, a bone marrow test, and a spinal tap—I was diagnosed with a form of leukemia called eosinophilia, a condition that develops when the bone marrow makes too many eosinophils (a type of white blood cell). The doctors said there was nothing they could do and planned to send me home with a life expectancy of six weeks. The day before I was supposed to leave the hospital, the doctors took one more bone marrow test and a spinal tap, as I lay inthe hospital bed in a state of devastation and disbelief over the prognosis I had received.

Sometime during that day my grandfather, who had been like a second father to me, called the hospital to speak with me. My grandfather was a man whom I deeply respected and loved. As a young boy I spent countless hours with him, visiting his house almost every day, where he helped me with my science experiments and building projects, speaking words of encouragement to me as a mentor.

In his call, Grandfather told me about a vision the Lord had given him where he saw me going up to heaven sickly in a hospital bed and then coming back down from the clouds healthy and dressed in normal clothes. My grandfather spoke with a humble confidence, You are going to be healed. The Lord told me in prayer.

Although I was not walking with the Lord yet, I immediately clung to those words. My grandfather’s words had weight, and what he spoke to me over the phone that afternoon became a source of hope in one of my darkest hours.

Not long after my grandfather shared his vision, as I lay there alone in my hospital bed, I realized that my previous